Religious Ethics

Peter Singer is often described as the world's most influential philosopher. He is also one of its most controversial. The author of important books such as Animal Liberation and Practical Ethics, he helped launch the animal rights and effective altruism movements and contributed to the development of bioethics. Now, in Ethics in the Real World, Singer shows that he is also a master at dissecting important current events in a few hundred words.

Contemporary culture trivializes the "seven deadly sins," or vices, as if they have no serious moral or spiritual implications. Glittering Vices clears this misconception by exploring the traditional meanings of gluttony, sloth, lust, and others. It offers a brief history of how the vices were compiled and an eye-opening explication of how each sin manifests itself in various destructive behaviors. Listeners gain practical understanding of how the vices shape our culture today and how to correctly identify and eliminate the...patterns of sin in their own lives.

We can't help but be inspired by great leaders. In the midst of our increasingly divided age, examining great moral leaders can help us understand the central qualities of moral leadership and discover lessons for our own lives and times. This book explores the lives of 14 great moral leaders of recent centuries. Incorporating skillful storytelling, short biographies, and analyses, the book presents these exemplary moral leaders as human beings who are flawed in some ways, gifted in others, but unforgettable all the same.

Why has Christianity, a religion premised upon neighborly love, failed in its attempts to heal social divisions? In this ambitious and wide-ranging work, Willie James Jennings delves deep into the late medieval soil in which the modern Christian imagination grew, to reveal how Christianity's highly refined process of socialization has inadvertently created and maintained segregated societies.

From “national treasure” Francis Collins (Philip Yancey), the New York Times bestselling author of The Language of God and former director of the National Institutes of Health, comes a deeply thoughtful guidebook to get us beyond societal divisions and back to the sources of wisdom—"the...

Named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most important innovators of the century, Tariq Ramadan is a leading Muslim scholar, with a large following especially among young European and American Muslims. Now, in his first book written for a wide audience, he offers a marvelous biography of the Prophet Muhammad, one that highlights the spiritual and ethical teachings of one of the most influential figures in human history.

One of the most influential philosophers and theologians in the history of Western thought, St Thomas Aquinas established the foundations for much of modern philosophy of religion, and is famous for his arguments for the existence of God. In this cogent and multifaceted introduction to the great saint's work, Edward Feser argues that you cannot fully understand Aquinas' philosophy without his theology, and vice-versa. He covers Aquinas' thoughts on the soul, natural law, metaphysics, and more.

The essential guide for ethical decision-making in the 21st century, The Power of Ethics depicts “ethical decision-making not in a nebulous philosophical space, but at the point where the rubber meets the road” (Michael Schur, producer and creator of The Good Place). It’s not your...

Living with integrity is one the most important qualities in every minister's life. Jesus Christ modeled integrity in all that He did and said. The ethical principles He demonstrated comprise the highest and best lifestyle a person can live. These are the foundation of Christian ethics. In this book, the author explains the basis of Christian ethics, and then illustrates how we can apply those ethics so as to live with integrity in every area of our lives.

When it comes to same-sex relationships, this book by Karen Keen contains the most thoughtful, balanced, biblically grounded discussion you’re likely to encounter anywhere. With pastoral sensitivity and respect for biblical authority, Keen breaks through current stalemates in the debate surrounding faith and sexual identity.

Ethics is one of the most unique works in Western philosophy, an attempt to handle metaphysics, theology, anthropology, and ontology through the lens of geometric proofs. Spinoza felt that the path to happiness is through reason, in the use of the mind to demystify our existence and liberate us from passions and superstitions.

Changing Our Mind has helped thousands of families and congregations carefully and compassionately rethink traditional religious teachings about full LGBTQ inclusion. With growing scientific evidence, our wider society has taken big steps, but too many religious families and communities have not kept up. Dr. David Gushee offers a powerful, inspiring message of hope and healing by helping Christians to return to Bible study, prayer, and reflection in a way that creates a vision for a more inclusive church.

"In the Light of Truth: The Grail Message" is a classic work that offers clear and perceptive answers to questions which challenge every human being. Written between the years 1923-1937, it is a collection of 168 essays addressing all spheres of life ranging from God and the Universe to the Laws in Creation, the meaning of life, responsibility, free will, intuition and the intellect, the ethereal world and the beyond, justice and love. It answers eternal questions such as what does it mean to be human, what is the purpose of life on Earth, and what happens to "me" when I die.

Throughout the twentieth century, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was regarded as an important sociological and economic text, continuing into the twenty-first century, when extreme capitalism has continued to come under fire. Weber's work provided a history, from where the profit motive could be ethically justified. Max Weber combined his interests in sociology, political economy and history to give perspective to his analysis. Concentrating principally on the experience of the West, he returned to the time when religion, its concepts and practice, dominated society.

While imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, Simon Wiesenthal was taken one day from his work detail to the bedside of a dying member of the SS. Haunted by the crimes in which he had participated, the soldier wanted to confess to - and obtain absolution from - a Jew. Faced with the choice between compassion and justice, silence and truth, Wiesenthal said nothing.

In Sacrifice, Rene Girard interrogates the Brahmanas of Vedic India, exploring coincidences with mimetic theory that are too numerous and striking to be accidental. The Bible reveals collective violence, similar to that which generates sacrifice everywhere, but instead of making victims guilty, the Bible and the Gospels reveal the persecutors of a single victim. Instead of elaborating myths, they tell the truth absolutely contrary to the archaic sense.

Sometimes we make sacrifices to help us get ahead, to allow us more time with family, or because we believe in the cause. And then there are sacrifices in which we have no say, "Isaac experiences" as in Genesis 22, thrust upon us without warning or survival instructions.

"In the Light of Truth: The Grail Message" is a classic work that offers clear and perceptive answers to questions which challenge every human being. Written between the years 1923-1937, it is a collection of 168 essays addressing all spheres of life ranging from God and the Universe to the Laws in Creation, the meaning of life, responsibility, free will, intuition and the intellect, the ethereal world and the beyond, justice and love. It answers eternal questions such as what does it mean to be human, what is the purpose of life on Earth, and what happens to "me" when I die.

One of the most influential Roman perspectives on religion came from a nonreligious belief system that is finding new adherents even today: Stoicism. How did the Stoics think about religion? In How to Think About God, Philip Freeman presents vivid new translations of Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods and The Dream of Scipio. In these brief works, Cicero offers a Stoic view of belief, divinity, and human immortality, giving eloquent expression to the religious ideas of one of the most popular schools of Roman and Greek philosophy.

While teaching ethics is universally applauded, how one goes about it is much more difficult and contested than is often recognized. On Teaching and Learning Christian Ethics addresses what it means to teach and learn ethics through a thorough comparison of two ethicists, Henry Sidgwick and F. D. Maurice. Where Sidgwick understood ethics as developing a method for guiding voluntary action to what is right, Maurice maintained that ethics concerns life as a whole, and that requires placing it within a metaphysical and theological realm in which the good is much more definitive than right.