Theologian, Teacher, and Friend: Tributes to James M. Gustafson

This paper presents a rereading of David Little and Sumner Twiss's Comparative Religious Ethics in the context of its initial reception and legacy within the field of religious ethics and argues that we can read it more charitably as a piece of pragmatism rather than as a work of formalism or semi‐formalism. If one does not read Little and Twiss as committed positivists concerned with realizing a specific research program associated with the “twilight of logical empiricism,” then their theoretical and methodological recommendations, illustrated in their case studies, appear more pragmatic in nature and less excessively rigid. By rereading Comparative Religious Ethics in this light, we can see more clearly its relevance for the field today, particularly regarding the fundamental importance of the discursive activity of practical reasoning, or the game of giving and asking for reasons, in the study of religious ethics.

Section: Initial Receptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethics After Comparative Religious Ethics: Rereading Little and Twiss in a Pragmatic Light

Lee

2023

“…Its argument finally clicks for the reader near its end, when it links the tradition of right authority in the just war tradition to the early 2000s talk of regime change in Iraq (Johnson 2003, 17, 17–18n1). Almost two decades earlier, James Childress's portrayal in the JRE of the “tensions created by the principle of [Christian] love” (1984, 4) in the discourse about war in the early Church was part of a larger project of narrating the common context, and thus the intellectual proximity, of Christian pacifists and Christian just warriors in his own day (Childress 1982, 93). Regime change and common cause are not the conclusions of Johnson's or Childress's arguments; they are the backdrops that determine how they tell their stories.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…It is true that Deuteronomy 20:5–8 is not a set of verses about the justice of a military conflict; the text is about conscription and its limits, and those who go home from the battle may very well affirm its justice. But it is still quite surprising that these verses rarely arise in the Christian discussions of war that have come to be canonical, especially given that some Christians in antiquity were executed for refusing conscription into the Roman army (see Childress 1984, 4–5). Augustine's only citation to Deuteronomy 20:5–7 comes in Questions of the Heptateuch , where he makes the point that the owner of the new building or vineyard, or the newly betrothed man, is no less brave if he is “captivated by these things in his mind.” Augustine hypothesizes that a clear‐eyed view of the matter should lead the betrothed man not to turn back, and instead proceed onto the battlefield, since “it is better for another man to marry an inviolate woman than a widow” (Augustine 2016, 333).…”

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confidence: 99%

Fearful and Faint‐Hearted: On Affect and the Just‐War Tradition

Kavka¹

2023

In the spirit of this group of articles commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Journal of Religious Ethics, dealing with tradition-based reasoning, this article takes up a passage from Deuteronomy 20 that allows the "fearful and faint-hearted" person not to participate in battle, as well as the rabbinic and medieval appropriations of this passage in the Jewish tradition. It argues that this verse gives primacy to affect in a way that complicates standard interpretations of the Jewish tradition on just war and allows us to see the pliability of tradition. Finally, the article argues that scholars assessing the justice of conflicts need to attend to the circulation of affects in a reasoning community, as is currently happening on scholarship on moral injury.

“…He said, "I finished at Yale in 1968, and Yale Graduate School [in religious studies] was largely a Protestant enclave. The first Catholic PhD in religious studies was probably Al Jonsen, who received his degree in 1967"(Childress 2022). Lisa Cahill has recently written about "Catholic doctoral students flooding historically Protestant divinity schools in the wake of the Second Vatican Council"(Childress et al 2022, 4).…”

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confidence: 99%

Religious Ethics as a Social Practice

Balthrop‐Lewis

2023

The Journal of Religious Ethics (JRE) was established at a particular moment in the United States in the early 1970s. This article investigates how that moment—in the institutional milieu of academic theology and religious studies in which the (JRE) emerged—influenced its founding. It does this through attention to three main sources: (1) the original charter and bylaws of the JRE, (2) publications from the JRE and other scholarly outlets in the period, and (3) a collection of interviews with scholars who occupied editorial roles in the first 10 years of the life of the journal. The article suggests that the JRE's early period was driven by three key forces: the emergence of Christian ethics as a field of academic theology, deepening engagement with academic philosophy among students of Christian ethics, and growing attention to the pedagogical requirements of increasingly pluralist tertiary educational environments. In conclusion, I describe my own place in this history, asking how the dynamics around the founding of the JRE shape my participation in the practice enacted in its pages.