New Issue of Practical Matters: On Ethnography in Religious Studies and Theology

Issue six of Practical Matters is now online. It has a special focus on the use of ethnography in religious studies and theology. I highly recommend that those interested in such work go check it out.

Book Review: Compassionate Justice

Marshall, Christopher D. Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012.

I am in the middle of writing a dissertation on transitional justice and teaching a three-month Sunday school class on biblical justice. In both of those endeavors Christopher Marshall’s work has proven to be vital. In his previous books on biblical justice as restorative justice (Beyond Retribution and The Little Book of Biblical Justice), Marshall has proven himself to be a world-class scholar of both the Bible and of the restorative justice movement. His work on this subject has influenced theologians, ethicists, and even political scientists to begin speaking of justice after crime and violence in primarily restorative rather than retributive terms. (For example, see the work of theologian John W. de Gruchy and political scientist Daniel Philpott.) Thus, I was very excited to read Marshall’s newest contribution to this topic.

In Compassionate Justice Marshall examines two of Jesus’s parables (The Good Samaritan and The Prodigal Son) through the lenses of restorative justice, and suggests that reading the parables through such lenses can influence contemporary justice practices. Here Marshall flexes his interdisciplinary muscles by engaging in critical biblical scholarship and dialoguing with the most recent scholarship in law and criminology. Marshall’s basic argument is that these parables are stories of justice as restoration rather than simply stories of mercy. Thus, Jesus teaches us the importance of compassion in justice by telling these stories.

The basic thrust of the restorative justice movement is that criminal justice should focus more on the needs of victims and the restoration of ruptured relationships than the mere punishment of offenders. Generally speaking, western legal systems understand justice as the punishment of criminals or, more metaphysically, the balancing of the cosmic scales of justice by inflicting an appropriate amount of pain and/or shame on those who have caused pain/shame. Crime, in this general framework, is understood primarily as a violation against the state or a cosmic scale of justice. Against this understanding, restorative justice advocates and practitioners argue that crime is primarily harm done to persons and relationships rather than primarily harm done to the state. Thus, justice is primarily the righting of the wrongs done to persons and relationships and not primarily about wrongs done to the state.

Reading Jesus’s two most famous parables through the lenses of restorative justice, then, highlights the ways that these parables are about the restoration of persons and relationships. Jesus teaches that what is required in instances of injury is the restoration of those persons/relationships that have been injured. For example, in the story of the good Samaritan we see the Samaritan take steps to make right all of those things that were made wrong. Where the robbed man is ignored the Samaritan gives him attention. Where he is robbed the Samaritan provides for him financially. Where he is physically injured the Samaritan provides for his physical healing. Where he is left in the elements the Samaritan provides him with shelter. It is not just that the Samaritan shows the robbed man mercy, but he meets the exact needs that arise from the injustice he endured. In this, the Samaritan engages in restorative justice.

In a similar manner, Marshall shows us how the father in the story of the prodigal son restores the son to his proper relationship as a son. The way that Jesus tells the story makes it clear that the prodigal does great harm to his relationship with his father (and his brother). In an honor/shame society the prodigal’s actions serve to sever the parent-child relationship he has with his father. Thus, when he is starving in a far-away country he can only imagine returning to his father’s house as a servant. However, his father restores him to the status of son by his treatment of him upon return. Similarly, the prodigal’s brother refuses to even call him brother but refers to his brother as “this son of yours.” However, the father pleads with the brother to accept the prodigal as a brother. The story, then, can be read as a story of the restoration of relationship – as a story of restorative justice.

Importantly, both of these parables highlight the place of compassion for the restoration of relationship and the doing of justice. Marshall, therefore, argues for a place for compassion in justice. Arguing primarily with Annalise Acorn’s book Compulsory Compassion: A Critique of Restorative Justice, Marshall employs these parables, as well as his vast knowledge of the literature in restorative justice, to argue for the appropriateness of compassion in criminal justice.

The book is interdisciplinary, well-researched, and accessible. It continues Marshall’s important contributions both to biblical studies and restorative justice. Anyone interested in biblical studies, criminal and restorative justice, reconciliation, and methods in interdisciplinary scholarship should read this book. It receives my strongest recommendation.

Book Review: A Faith Embracing All Creatures

(A Faith Embracing All Creatures is the second book in The Peaceable Kingdom Series being published by Cascade/Wipf and Stock. I reviewed the first book in this series, A Faith Not Worth Fighting For, here.)

“The Peaceable Kingdom Series is a multi-volume series that seeks to challenge the pervasive violence assumed necessary in relation to humans, nonhumans, and the larger environment.” Each individual volume is set up in such a way so that each chapter is a response to a commonly asked question skeptical about the topic at hand. Each chapter is written by a theological scholar or engaged Christian practitioner versed in the topic. In this way, the series is one of the best examples of “public scholarship” that I am aware of. It brings some of the best thinking on pressing issues into the hands of “everyday” readers. For this, I applaud the editors and publishers.

The second volume in the series sets out to answer questions about and argue for the Christian call to “embrace all creatures.” The primary focus of most of the essays is advocating for Christians to eat a vegan, or at least vegetarian, diet. However, other instances of human-animal interactions (such as laboratory testing) are mentioned as well. The primary thrust of the book’s argument is that God’s eschatological kingdom is one which will know no violence – including violence against animals. The Church and Christians, called to embody this kingdom in the here and now as much as possible, are thus called in their discipleship to reject violence against their fellow breathing creatures. Faithful kingdom discipleship is discipleship that rejects violence of any kind.

The book begins in Genesis 1 and the question of human dominion, proceeds through questions about the covenant with Noah, animal sacrifices in the Old Testament, and Jesus eating fish and lamb. If God called on humans to sacrifice animals or if Jesus ate animals, for example, why are Christians supposed to abstain from eating animals? These are the kinds of questions that Christian vegetarians and vegans often face and that the authors attempt to answer. The advocates of Christian vegetarianism are meeting meat-eating Christians on their own terms.

In my opinion, the chapters that address specific biblical texts generally fail to convince. For example, in chapter 9 Annika Spalde and Pelle Strindlund take on the story of Jesus healing the man possessed by a “legion” of demons who then, with Jesus’s permission, leave the man and enter into pigs which commit mass suicide. “Clearly,” skeptical Christians say to Christian vegetarians, “this shows that Jesus values human life more than animal life. Indeed, here Jesus views animals as mere property that can be killed at a moment’s notice. How can you then affirm that humans shouldn’t kill animals for food when Jesus “killed” a multitude of animals in this story?”

Spalde and Strindlund, in my opinion, do a wonderful job of presenting an anti-imperial reading of the text. Naming the demon(s) “Legion,” for instance, is clearly an allusion to the Roman imperial army. Also, several of the Greek words in the story (such as apostello, agele, and epetrepsen autois) are words that had military connotations. And the pigs in the story act in ways quite unnatural to pigs; for example, rushing forward in unison rather than in multiple directions. Clearly, something out of the ordinary is up. For Spalde and Strindlund, then, this story is best read (metaphorically?) as a story of Jesus challenging imperial violence. They say, “That Mark and the other authors depict the destruction of animals is unfortunate. Yet it is also the case that no moral lesson regarding our relationship to animals can be derived from this text since it is really about Jesus’s interaction with a powerful military regime…This text is about a person possessed by a military spirit, whom Jesus freed; God Almight versus imperial might – that is the structure of this text” (107).

While I find this interpretation intriguing and plausible (and exciting!), it is clear that Mark and the early church also understood this event to be something that actually happened. And most Christians today will read it in the same way. Jesus gave permission for demons to kill pigs. Likewise, God did command ancient Israel to sacrifice thousands of animals, Jesus as a Jew who spent much time in Galilee likely did eat fish, and occasionally lamb, etc. There may indeed be reasons for these actions that point to a deeper meaning, but these animals were harmed according to God’s action, most Christians believe. The interpretive moves taken to explain away these likely historical facts are, in the end, unconvincing.

However, those places where the authors bring out themes in scripture which support a contemporary vegetarian diet are compelling. Specifically, the authors collectively argue that 1) the dominion given humans in Genesis 1 is to be a dominion exercised in a spirit of servanthood rather than dominance, imitating the loving and sacrificial dominion of God and lordship of Christ, 2) God clearly cares for animals and we are called to care for them as well, 3) the kingdom of God will be one where wolves lie with lambs, and natural predators no longer eat their prey, so that should be modeled in the here and now, and 4) it appears that Adam and Eve had only a vegetarian diet before the fall and the killing of animals for clothing and food only comes after sin enters the world. All of these are compelling themes which, if nothing else, teach us that we should treat animals with more compassion and care than we currently do.

And here is where the volume is at its most compelling: In chapter 11, titled “Are We Addicted to the Suffering of Animals?” John Berkman paints a picture of factory farms that is deplorable. This picture is not new to those familiar with this field or who have watched Food Inc. or other such documentaries. Simply speaking, the mass production of animals for food in developed countries is inhumane. This, in conjunction with the negative effects such food production has on the poor around the world, is a compelling reason for Christians to remove themselves as much as possible from the system to maintain some semblance of moral purity.

About five years ago my wife and I began lessening meat in our diet for exactly these reasons. First, we stopped buying red meat. Then we stopped buying chicken breasts. Then ground turkey. Now, we only buy fish on occasion, and usually from local vendors, and we typically only eat meat when eating out or at the home of another family. We are now calling ourselves “social meat eaters.” We have done this for a combination of reasons, but one dominant one is the gross amount of injustice tied to the factory farming of animals. This stance, for us, has meant a drastic reduction in meat consumption, but we still do partake at holidays, celebrations, and as an act of hospitality to those who host us. (Interestingly, there is a chapter in the volume that argues that Christian hospitality does not require accepting the gifts of others when in their home, but actually requires hospitality to those who enter your home – including animals.)

Unfortunately, there is relatively little space in the volume outside of Berkman’s essay devoted to these issues – though they are the most powerful argument for contemporary vegeatarianism. Also unfortunate is a lack of elaboration upon a few statements made by ecologist and evolutionary biologist Mark Bekoff in the preface. Bekoff says that “Once we realize the common bonds of compassion we share with other animals…[we will make] different choices about who (not what) we eat and buy, how we educate, entertain, and amuse ourselves, and how we conduct research” (xi). He says that animals “are rational, sentient creatures who care as much about their lives as we do our own” (xii). I wish more had been said about this topic.

And it is here that we find the greatest weakness in the book. In its laudable determination to answer the questions many Christians are actually asking it focuses disproportionately on questions of biblical interpretation. This approach is not compelling, however, because these are the wrong questions. The average person will not find several of the arguments made throughout the book convincing because to ask such questions is to read the Bible differently than the authors in the text. It is clear that the “biblical world” is one that assumes the owning, killing, and eating of animals. There may be, and I am convinced is, a biblical move in the direction of compassion and care for all of God’s creatures, but it is not one towards a principled veganism. To imply that there is such an ethic in the Bible seems to be imposing modern concerns upon an ancient text. This weakness in the book exposes a broader weakness in some strands of Christian theology and ethics; simply speaking, the Bible doesn’t have an answer for everything we face in the modern world.

The factory farming of animals didn’t exist in the world of the Bible. The links between the food industrial complex and climate change, global poverty, and obesity in wealthy countries were unthinkable. The production of animals too big to walk because they are so overfed and pumped full of steroids was centuries away. The Bible is not all we need when doing ethics. We need the Wesleyan quadrilateral or the hermeneutical circle or Ernst Troeltsch/H.R. Niebuhr’s triadic approach to faith, history, and ethics. We need more than the Bible to tackle the ethics of how humans treat animals. In short, we need to take seriously historical experience, the natural and social sciences, and other forms of knowledge available to us. The authors recognize this, and several incorporate such analyses into their chapters. However, these detours from the questions that drive the text are too brief to convert the unbeliever.

In my opinion, questions of social justice should push American Christians to limit their meat consumption and to challenge the existing system of food production. It is unjust, unhealthy, and inhumane. However, this doesn’t necessarily lead one to totally abstain from eating meat. If one can find and afford sustainable and humane meat, cheese, and eggs, I see no reason why eating them should be avoided from a social justice perpective. Indeed, we should encourage Christians and others to participate in these alternative and local forms of food production and economic systems. The case for totally abstaining from eating animals, it seems to me, rests on Bekoff’s claims about what we have come to know about animal rationality and emotions and our “bonds of compassion” with them. I am not well read in the science that is beginning to show that animals are more “human” than we have imagined, but I know that it exists. An accessible summary of that research would have been more compelling than an essay arguing that Jesus might not have eaten lamb at the last supper.

Still, taking seriously the eschatological vision of predators lying with their prey and God’s loving care of all creation are important biblical themes that Christians should more seriously consider. And many of the passages Christians point to to justify their harsh treatment of animals, like Genesis 1, are misused when used that way. These are important corrections to much popular understanding of the Christian faith. However, I am unconvinced that the Christian faith requires a plant-based diet for all Christians across time and culture. If this is not the case, then the contextual argument for contemporary vegetarianism/veganism in the developed world must be made by answering different questions. Berkman’s essay is a step in this direction. To find answers to similar questions one must look elsewhere.

Mark Juergensmeyer on “Sociotheology and Cosmic War”

The Religious Studies Podcast has recently posted an interview with Mark Juergensmeyer. Juergensmeyer is one of the leading scholars in the field of religious violence. Specifically, he has helped bring to the surface the ways that “religious” violence is often a response to “secular” phenomena like globalization. A key concept in this theorizing is what he has termed “cosmic war.”

Building upon his years of work on this and related topics he is now arguing for a sociotheological approach to studying religion and violence. He says that sociotheology “takes seriously the whole structure of a religious worldview and understands it as it is embedded in its social contexts.” This combination of sociological methods with theological literacy could have very practical application in dealing with religious terrorists. Specifically, he points out the ways that the US response to David Koresh or Osama bin Laden could have been different (and more effective). Listen to the whole podcast here.

The present state of Christian social ethics

Earlier this month I attended the annual meeting of the Society of Christian ethics, the primary scholarly society devoted to Christian ethics in North America. Each year the president of the society determines the theme for the conference and invites the plenary speakers. The president for this year’s meeting was Miguel De La Torre. Dr. De La Torre is a Latino Liberationist ethicist and the conference focused on themes in liberationist ethics. Along with his own presidential address, the plenaries were given by by George “Tink” Tinker (an American Indian liberationist) and James Cone (the father of Black Liberation Theology). A theme of both Tinker and De La Torre’s presentations was, it seemed to me, the irredeemability of the (racist) American project and neoliberal globalization (as the children of Euro-Christian colonialism). Thus, De La Torre has proposed an ethics of jodiendo. In short, De La Torre, a leading thinker in the field of Christian ethics, recommends that the ethical action available to people on “the margins,” Christian or not, is to screw with the system, to expose its brutality and injustice, but that there is no real hope of transforming the system to be just.

Last year’s president was Stanley Hauerwas. Hauerwas has become famous for rejecting Liberalism (as a philosophical project) and the American project of global military and economic domination. His response, in contrast to De La Torre’s suggestion of grassroots “screwing with the system,” has been to advocate the formation of faithful local Christian communities able to form people into the Christian virtues. In advocating this position he has robustly criticized the American tradition of Christian social ethics as irredeemably bound to the failed project of American Liberalism. While respecting the work of people like Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey, Hauerwas has declared their work to be too bound up in the American political project to be faitfhful to the heart of the Christian gospel or useful to actually existing Christian communities. He has called capitalism, American militarism and civil religion, and Liberalism, idolatrous and incapable of forming virtuous citizens. Thus, he advocates for a kind of Christian radical democracy primarily housed in local Christian communities.

Against these two forms of critique which declare, in effect, that Christian social ethics is (or should be) dead stands the mainstream of the tradition as found in Walter Rauschenbusch, the Niebuhr brothers, the recently deceased Beverly Harrison, and more recently in figures such as Glen Stassen. Gary Dorrien has described Christian social ethics as “a tradition that began with the distinctively modern idea that Christianity has a social-ethical mission to transform the structures of society in the direction of social justice” (Dorrien, Social Ethics in the Making, 1). This tradition, it seems to me, is best summed up in Dorothy Day’s mission “to make the kind of society where it is easier to be good.” Christian social ethics was born in response to the rise of the social sciences and the injustices of the industrial age by ministers in poor communities realizing that ministries of benevolence were not adequate to meet the needs of their parishioners. Thus, they entered the fray of social criticism and politics to seek justice in combination of doing mercy.

Of course, this project had mixed results. The era of mainline Protestant dominance in American culture has vanished. The twentieth century was not, to the surprise of many of the early social gospellers (had they lived to see the end of it), the “Christian century.” In these and other ways the project of Christian social ethics can seem to be outdated or to have lost its significance. This is why, in part, the critiques of De La Torre and Hauerwas can be so powerful and persuasive.

All of these competing accounts of Christian ethics, from the postcolonial liberationism of De La Torre to the mainstream tradition of Christian social ethics to the post-liberal/post-Christendom/new ecclesiology ethics of Hauerwas, have been competing in my head for some time now. I have moments where I am more attracted to one approach or the other; they each have their merits and their weaknesses.

It is in the context of this debate that I picked up Jurgen Moltmann’s newest book, Ethics of Hope. Finally, after more than forty years, Moltmann has published a systematic ethics – the sequel to his groundbreaking first book Theology of Hope. In this text he describes the heart of his “ethics of hope” in this way:

The principle behind this ethics of hope is:
- not to turn swords into Christian swords
- not to retreat from the swords to the ploughshares
- but to make ploughshares out of swords. (Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, xiii)

“To make plowshares out of swords” – this, it seems to me, is the heart of Christian social ethics, and it is a goal worth pursuing. The temptation to turn swords into Christian (?) swords or to leave the swords to do their violent work, rather than to transform swords into plowshares, is everpresent in Christian ethics. However, it is a temptation that must be resisted. For if we are to be virtuous people we must live in a society that makes virtue possible. In this way, Dorothy Day’s mission to create a society in which it is easier to be good should be the goal of every Christian and social ethicist. Importantly, there are ways that liberationists, post-liberals, and even the mainstream tradition of Christian social ethics claim Day as a forbear. What this teaches us, I think, is that these positions are not necessarily mutually exclusive and that there continues to be mutual learning that can occur across these ideological differences.

May we all – liberationists, post-liberals, and social ethicists – follow the example of Dorothy Day and devote ourselves to the hard work of creating a good society.

Defining American Evangelicalism

Academics love to debate the definitions of the terms that they use. One term that has proven to be quite susceptible to being defined in such a way as to fit an author’s predetermined goal is “American Evangelicalism.” Into the morass of definitions for this religious and political movement I believe a recent post at The Immanent Frame has brought some clarity. In a post titled “Evangelicals who have left the right,” Marcia Pally (author of The New Evangelicals: Expanding the Vision of the Common Good), defines American Evangelicalism in this way:

…American Evangelicalism is an approach to Protestantism across denominations, its central features including: the search for a renewal of faith toward an “inner” personal relationship with Jesus; the mission to bring others to this sort of personal relationship; the cross as a symbol of not only salvation but also of service to others; individual acceptance of Jesus’ gift of redemption; individualist Bible reading by ordinary men and women; and the priesthood of all believers independent of ecclesiastical or state authorities. It was a progressive movement from the colonial era to World War One. Its emphasis on individual conscience made it anti-elitist, anti-authoritarian, economically populist, and socially activist on behalf of the common man. Twice in the twentieth century, evangelicals turned to the right, the second time in the late 1970s, when they became a central pillar in the modern conservative movement.

This, I think, is actually a pretty accurate definition of the movement theologically and historically. The rest of the article provides a good synopsis of a third turn, this time to the left, in American Evangelicalism which is currently taking shape. I recommend reading the whole article.

Theology for the Miserable Ones: Reflections on Les Miserables

I have long said that one day I’d like to write an article or a book examining the theology and social ethics of Les Miserables. If you know me you may have heard me say, provocatively, that Les Mis is the greatest piece of social ethics after the Bible and Augustine’s City of God. In short, I think quite highly of the book and the musical. The recent release of the newest film adaptation has spurred some theological commentary across the internet on this subject. Two of the best examples of this are Beth Haile’s use of the film as a typology of ethical theories and Richard Beck’s “missional” interpretation of individual mercy in light of social justice. Beck’s placing Enjolras and Javert along a continuum of justice is an especially interesting move. However, Beck is tempted by the common interpretation of placing mercy/grace in contention with justice. It is here that I make my intervention: Les Miserables isn’t about grace vs. justice (at least not wholly). Les Mis is about restorative and transformative justice vs. retributive justice.

During my years managing a homeless shelter I worked with numerous men who had become homeless upon leaving prison. With empty pockets they entered a society unwilling to give them jobs because of past sins and they wound up in the street. The executive director of the nonprofit, in passing, once told me that Les Mis was the greatest story ever told. I had never read or watched it at that point. Since then, I’ve seen the musical in London and Atlanta, watched the 1998 film countless times, read the (unabridged!) novel, and seen the most recent film. And after all of this I am convinced that my friend and boss may have been correct. (Tangentially, he is also the one who began my move toward seeing the value of a Niebuhrian interpretation of social life. Trying to do justice for and with the poorest can do that to a neophyte Yoderian.)

Anyways, I digress. Clearly, mercy and grace are part of the story. However, and I think the movie does this better than the play (though the novel is most explicit), there is a strong condemnation of the prisons and treatment of those who have committed crimes in Victor Hugo’s France. Indeed, Valjean commits his second crime, in part, because he can’t get a legitimate job. In this way he is not unlike many of the homeless friends I have known. And the Bishop surely shows mercy by not having Valjean arrested after stealing he steals the Bishop’s silver. But it is here where many people miss or skip over the justice argument.

It is true that this act of grace transforms Valjean. The musical makes this clear during Valjean’s soliloquy. The line “He told me I have a soul … How does he know?” always hits me. However, and this is clearer in the novel, it is the Bishop’s material aid to Valjean which makes his transformation possible. Valjean didn’t just receive grace, he received the means he needed to live a virtuous life in community. Valjean uses the silver given him by the Bishop numerous times throughout his life: to build a business, to pay for Cosette, to sustain them in Paris, etc. When he realizes that he’ll not be able to remain mayor he buries his treasure in the woods and returns to it several times throughout the story when he and Cosette needed for this purpose or that. This is cut out of the musical/film, but is vital to Valjean’s and Cosette’s survival.

Valjean was first imprisoned for stealing some food to feed his hungry relatives. He then endured 19 years of hard labor (aka state slavery) and is excluded from a dignified existence in society upon his release. He was wronged by his community. And, while the community didn’t repay him for that wrong, the bishop, in a mediating position, did. Valjean doesn’t just receive mercy from the bishop. He finally receives justice. He receives compensation for the countless injustices he has endured.

After this act of restorative justice Valjean is able to go revitalize a city by running a socially responsible business and governing that city with a vision of the social good that includes mercy and care for neighbors. AND THEN, when faced with the injustice he inadvertently committed against Fantine, he spends the rest of his life making right what he helped to make wrong. This is not just a supererogatory act. It is not some act from a saint. It is Valjean’s application of his understanding of what justice demands. Justice demands restoration in whatever way it is possible.

In short, when watching Les Mis don’t stop, as Christians are wont to do, at mercy and grace. The bishop didn’t stop there and neither did Valjean. Rather, make the move to understanding justice in restorative and socially transformative ways. Because, in my reading, this is what Hugo argues for against Javert’s retributivist vision. (And don’t cast Javert as a simple villian, he is a man committed to a principle of justice many of us, explicitly or unconsciously, subscribe to. As his suicide makes clear, his world and the world of Valjean are not the same moral world. We live in a world more like Javert’s than Valjean’s. Why is this and how can we change it?)

What “the miserable/wretched ones” need is not simply acts of mercy. What they need is a justice that restores and transforms. May we all embrace such a vision.

New SSRC Publication: Religion, Development, and the United Nations

In 2011, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the Interfaith Center of New York (ICNY) convened a series of consultations that brought together representatives of various agencies of the United Nations, leaders of faith-based non-governmental organizations, and academic researchers working in a number of different disciplines. Each of these gatherings sought to open a space for reflection and critical dialogue on religion, peacebuilding, development, gender, and a range of related issues. This SSRC report summarizes the key questions the consultations were designed to address, the central outcomes of these exploratory discussions, and select recommendations for those working in the field.

The report can be found here.

Theology, Law, and Stanley Hauerwas

The influential and often controversial theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas has often been accused of being sectarian. However, a quick perusal of his engagement with scholars in medicine and politics quickly challenges that notion. And now there is the newest issue (75.4) of Law and Contemporary Problems to add to the mix of Hauerwas engaging with some of the best thinkers in a discipline not his own which is also relevant to social life.

The newest issue, edited by John D. Inazu, is titled “Theological Argument in Law: Engaging with Stanley Hauerwas.” All articles are available for free as .pdf documents. (Summaries of the articles can be found here.) If you are interested in the relation of theology, religion, law, and politics I’d suggest giving it a quick look over.

New Blog – Spirited Thinking: Religion and Ethics at Emory

I heard about this project awhile back and it appears it has now come to fruition: Emory University has launched a new blog on religion and ethics. The blog is titled Spirited Thinking. Go check it out!