Working within the framework of concern for justice, Christian ethicists have treated the counsel of detachment as destructive of active involvement in history and have undertaken to rehabilitate anger as the mark of caring and as the engine powering the struggle for social justice. Aided by the suggestive accounts of virtue offered by Georges Bernanos in Diary of a Country Priest and Charles Dickens in Dombey and Son, the author upholds the importance of detachment (understood not as indifference but as the alternative to self-will) and explores the problematic character of anger in its relation to justice, change, and gratitude. While the two novelists set before us powerful and magnetic instances of just anger in Mme. la Comtesse, Chantal, and Edith Dombey, they also deliberately contrast these characters against the detached love of the nameless priest and Dombey's daughter Florence. The critique of anger constituted by these stores raises provocative questions about the notion that anger can be good.

I consider in this essay three possible interpretations of the infinitely rich story of Abraham and Isaac found in Genesis 22. Against the background of what I call "the traditional reading," I compare the views of William Blake, Johannes de Silentio, and Søren Kierkegaard. Blake's poetry and painting suggest a striking alternative to our usual understanding of the story, but they finally require too radical a departure from the Biblical text. The pseudonym de Silentio's views on obedience to God, presented in Fear and Trembling, are even more problematic, however. They are at odds with Kierkegaard's powerful account of love of neighbor, related under his own name in Works of Love, for instance. The God who is Love would not literally require murderous intent toward a neighbor, I conclude, but that same God might issue an "ironic" command designed to lift us out of an abominable ritual.

Under current medical practice, when a child is born with ambiguous genitalia, sex is assigned and medical/surgical intervention undertaken. This practice is criticized by the Intersex Society of North America and by feminist scholars. Together they are creating a "politics of difference" approach in which differences are not seen as "defects" to be corrected. This paper analyzes the reasons offered in support of current medical practice and of the politics of difference, and argues for a move toward the latter. Crucial to the determination that this move is warranted are justice concerns and the emergence of support groups and technologies that allow geographically separated individuals to form a relevant "group."

This essay considers the contemporary debate about the nature of Christian love and its relation to friendship from a perspective informed by the martyrological context in which Christian love is disclosed. In this context agape is understood as simultaneously the willing of the neighbor's good and the witness to the divine source of all goodness. From this perspective it is argued that friendship, far from being alien to Christian love, is one of its primary works, its principal criterion, and the context in which it is put most decisively to the test.

This essay illustrates how insights gained from virtue ethics would reframe clergy ethics. By sketching virtue-oriented themes that have received scant attention in the current work on clergy ethics, I show how a virtue-informed clergy ethics focuses on moral growth and the everyday aspects of ministry instead of dilemmas and discrete actions. Those virtue-oriented themes include the role of prayer and friendship in the formation of the pastor's character, the refocusing of pastoral moral leadership on training parishioners for the Christian life, and the way virtue ethics changes what we perceive to be the central ethical issues of ministry and how we deliberate about them.

This essay analyzes Ernst Troeltsch's course lectures on "practical Christian ethics" held at the University of Heidelberg in 1911—12. The author situates these lectures within Troeltsch's wider teaching activity, assesses the reliability of the extant student notes which preserve them, explains the idiosyncratic meaning of a "practical" ethics within Troeltsch's total theological program, critically interprets the method and content of the lectures, and suggests in conclusion that Troeltsch's approach to the tension between the universal aspirations of, and the particular historical genesis of, religio-ethical traditions remains relevant, perhaps even instructive, for contemporary debates in religious and theological ethics.

In recent years, there has been a debate, centrally between James Turner Johnson and James F. Childress, on how to understand the just war tradition. The international arena has historically served as the context for demonstrating the normative and political utility of the just war tradition. Contemporary experience shows, however, that violence is not only a distant issue, but it is also a local, domestic problem. Investigation into contemporary police practice, a lacuna in Christian ethics, with regard to the justifiable use of force can help clarify which understanding of the just war tradition is preferable.

Emerging from the first successful cloning of a mammal, a sheep named "Dolly," is a critical but under-asked question: "Why do so many of us find this feat (and its potential application to human subjects) to be deeply disturbing?" This paper suggests that the answer rests not primarily in the theological and philosophical arguments most often heard against cloning but in the threat the act poses to our foundational "cosmological categories." Building upon theories introduced by Mary Douglas and Jeffrey Stout, the essay argues that Dolly becomes a "cabbit" in sheep's clothing—an outwardly innocuous entity which, like Stout's cat/rabbit, offends at a deep and visceral level. Like the cabbit, the cloned sheep and especially the cloned human are disturbing not because of the way they are produced nor by the physical threat they pose but because they challenge the very way we understand and organize our world.

During 1996-1997, between the OJ Simpson criminal and civil trials, the media needed a sensational topic. They discovered "Ebonics." The Oakland, California School Board's resolution declaring "Ebonics" a language triggered controversy and condemnation. This essay explores ethical implications for the pedagogical use of Ebonics from a Womanist perspective, as a vehicle of empowerment. After defining Womanist thought, I explore: (1) the history of Ebonics and the Oakland School Board's concerns; (2) the impact of Ebonics on student and teacher authority; (3) the hermeneutics and ethical issues surrounding Ebonics; and (4) how using Ebonics empowers or marginalizes teacher and student.