Given the current interest in globalization, this paper seeks to identify and explicate some of the distinctive moral perspectives of Pacific Islanders. Drawing on the narrative approach of Nussbaum, within a broader hermeneutical perspective, the author seeks to interpret moral orientations in legends from Fiji and the Cook Islands. It is argued that these orientations provide a fresh understanding of contemporary political events and social relations in the islands. The paper concludes by discussing issues raised by this type of narrative ethical analysis for the field of comparative religious ethics.

What is the direction of South African theological ethics as that country moves out of the apartheid era into a new democratic future? Following its struggle against apartheid, how will theology respond to the new challenge of making clear its distinctive stance in a democratic, multi-faith society with a secular constitution? A danger, similar to that previously discussed in the United States, exists in South Africa as theology evolves from a mode of resistance to that of compliance and accommodation, especially under the guise of "nation-building." The essay plots a trajectory by means of a consideration of four works representing nonracial liberationist theology which emerged at key points in the past fifteen years—the Kairos Document (1985), and works by Albert Nolan (1988), Charles Villla-Vicencio (1992), and James Cochrane (1999). For all their contextual sensitivity and strength, these works appear to offer little of a distinctively theological nature, and little of Christian substance to church and society. The way lies open for the development of an African Christian ethics.

On the assumption that Christian theism grounds all valid moral prescriptions in a divine purpose, Christian ethics is fundamentally challenged by the widespread consensus in contemporary democratic theory that justice should be separated from any comprehensive good. This essay responds to that challenge through a criticism of separationist theories of justice and a summary argument for democratic principles that depend on the divine good. Democratic justice is compound in character or includes a difference between formative principles, by which a political discourse about the good is constituted, and substantive principles, which should be convincing within the democratic discussion and debate. I argue programmatically that a theory of justice as general emancipation is compound and specifies Christian ethics to politics.

O'Donovan and Yoder are both radical critics of the modern liberal split between politics and religion and the view that there can be some neutral moral discourse to mediate between them. Both seek therefore to redescribe the political meaning of the Christian narrative vision for the late modern West and to show how liberalism represents a false version. There are, however, fundamental disagreements between O'Donovan's retrieval of Christendom political theology and Yoder's elaboration of the church as a voluntary political community of non-violent believers. Unfortunately the precise character of the disagreement tends to be obscured by caricatured descriptions of the other on both sides: Yoder's crude Constantinianism cannot begin to do justice to O'Donovan's position, and O'Donovan's dismissal of Yoder's "free" church voluntareity as a form of "neo-liberalism" is misplaced. My paper will redefine the disagreement as centered on their different political interpretations of biblical eschatology.

This essay illustrates the potential of religion to both oppress and empower women, focusing on the role of Buddhism in Thailand in relation to the trafficking of women for the sex industry. After describing a number of ways that traditional Thai Buddhist culture functions to legitimate the trafficking industry, and thereby deny the human rights of women involved in sexual slavery, I draw on the analogy of Christianity in relation to slavery in the ante-bellum American South to make the case that Buddhist teachings have the potential to oppose and condemn practices of sexual slavery as well as to justify and legitimate them. The essay concludes by discussing what are perhaps the most effective sources for empowering women involved in trafficking within the Thai Buddhist tradition.

This paper enlists the resources of Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy to argue that much of contemporary ethical discourse has become inarticulate about the idea of moral change qua change of consciousness. Tracing this inarticulacy to the eclipse of a notion of consciousness in three dominant forms of current moral discourse (liberal ethics, various forms of moral particularism, and postmodern ethics), the paper argues that these forms of ethics neglect the idea of moral change in favor of an emphasis on public and communal forms of moral language and moral reasoning. The paper's constructive thesis is that Murdoch's retrieval of the idea of consciousness, guided by a twofold notion of the good, provides critical resources for a recovery of the idea of moral change. In particular, her normative account of the work of moral imagination encourages moral agency in a cultural situation in which consciousness is increasingly formed by abstract systems and a global flow of images that are seemingly impervious to moral evaluation.

While Christian ethics utilizes various frameworks and tools, Stanley Hauerwas contends that narrative, character, and community are the crucial ones. This paper utilizes these aspects of Christian ethics to analyze cyberspace, juxtaposing them with Sherry Turkle's (and others') ethnographic studies of cyberspace. It then argues that while Hauerwas's critique of liberal society applies more aptly to cyberspace, his critique contains its own difficulties and internal tensions. Nevertheless, the critique and its difficulties, especially the sectarian charge, provide insights for framing Christian ethics in cyberspace.

Evangelicals are relative newcomers at the table of North American Christian Ethics. This paper analyzes evangelical ethics as a diverse movement with varying ethical methodologies and moral convictions, but with several common commitments that hold it together as a "loosely-bound movement" within the contemporary religious and moral landscape. The paper first sketches the historical background of evangelicalism with some of its primary theological and sociological features. It then probes the movement's ethical thought in two areas: the popular shapers of evangelical ethics (since evangelicalism has always been a populist movement) and the academic ethicists. These analyses will demonstrate that evangelicalism is not the monolithic movement it is sometimes thought to be. The profile concludes with an analysis of the major commonalities shared by this diverse movement, namely its commitment to biblical authority as the ultimate source and norm of ethical reflection, and its commitment to the Christian moral life as a reflection of its piety and understanding of salvation.

How did Karl Barth understand ethical deliberation and what importance does his conception have for Christian ethics? These questions have been hotly contested. Some scholars find in Barth an occasionalism and/or intuitionism that leaves no room for ethical deliberation and has no relevance for Christian ethics. Other scholars find in him versions of casuistry or narrative ethics that have much relevance for Christian ethics. I argue that for Barth ethical deliberation involves an irreducible heterogeneity between the weighing of reasons or values that count for or against a possible course of action, on the one hand, and the act of testing these possible courses of action in encounter with the decision of God concerning them, on the other hand. I then show how casuistry and narrative play a necessary role in ethical deliberation but do not overcome its heterogeneity. Finally, I contrast Barth with superficially similar models of ethical deliberation and point out the theological rationale for his conception.