“Some Vital Religion”: Social Religion and the Science of Character Education in the United States, 1918–1932

The history of American public education has generally been considered as a steady transition from religious and sectarian to secular and pluralist, with the role of science in education increasing as the role of religion decreased. This article examines a conception of the role of religion in education that does not fit this narrative, the “social religion” of theorists of moral and character education in the 1920s. Relying on ideas of religious naturalism and with an orientation toward the practical effects of religious belief, this community of scholars asserted a concept of religion that would allow it to be at the heart of the common school project, uniting all under the common morality of the social good. Influenced both by liberal Protestant humanism and the scientific worldview pervasive in education reform at the time, these character educationists’ ideas remind us of the historical contingency of categories like “religious” and of the antiquity of ideas we might classify under the heading of spirituality in American culture.

Common Morality Principles in Biomedical Ethics: Responses to Critics

After briefly sketching common-morality principlism, as presented in Principles of Biomedical Ethics, this paper responds to two recent sets of challenges to this framework. The first challenge claims that medical ethics is autonomous and unique and thus not a form of, or justified or guided by, a common morality or by any external morality or moral theory. The second challenge denies that there is a common morality and insists that futile efforts to develop common-morality approaches to bioethics limit diversity and prevent needed moral change. This paper argues that these two critiques fundamentally fail because they significantly misunderstand their target and because their proposed alternatives have major deficiencies and encounter insurmountable problems.

Medical Ethics: Uncommon Morality and the Implications for Medical Ethics Education

"Common morality has been the touchstone for addressing issues of medical ethics since the publication of Beauchamp and Childress’s Principles of Biomedical Ethics in 1979. In my presentation, I will challenge that reigning view by presenting two arguments. The negative argument shows why common morality cannot be the ethics of medicine. The positive argument explains why medical professions require their own ethics. I will then explain medicine’s distinctive ethics in terms of the trust that society allows to the profession. By distinguishing roles from professions, I will explicate sixteen specific duties that medical professionals undertake when they join the profession. My derivation of medicine’s distinctive ethics begins with a thought experiment demonstrating that trust is at the core of medical practice. Society allows doctors to develop special knowledge and skills and allows them to employ special powers, privileges, and immunities that could be particularly dangerous to members of society. Society, therefore, has to be assured that professional’s use of their remarkable powers and privileges will be constrained to their intended use. Professions’ publically declared codes and oaths go a long way to engender public confidence in medical professionals. Medical education must complete the job by helping our trainees understand their professional obligations and become clinicians who uphold their profession’s ethics. Medical educators therefor have to help our students comprehend and internalize their duty to “seek trust and be deserving of it,” and uphold their fiduciary responsibility to “use medical knowledge, skills, powers and privileges for the benefit of patients and society.” "

Appeal to Women’s Experience in Ethics: Lessons from Feminism and the Challenge from Postcolonial Critique

Appeal to women’s experience for moral delineation in theological ethics has been perplexed by the issue of cultural diversity and colonialism as raised by postcolonial critique. This paper aims to examine the debates from Third-World feminism and Christian feminism in dealing with difference and solidarity, leading to the call for contextual analysis and related power mappings. Margaret A. Farley’s proposal for sexual ethics in Just Love will then serve as an example to discuss how the search for common morality among cultural diversity may prevent or reinforce colonial agendas and other privileges.

Defending Uselessness: Rousseau’s Harmless and Happy Idleness

While also valuing useful citizenship, Rousseau offers what is perhaps the most substantive modern account and defense of idleness. According to Rousseau, idleness’ attraction lies in its relation to human nature and its capacity for producing our highest happiness. However, Rousseau is also careful to show that most existing forms of idleness are false, and true idleness is a difficult achievement. The happiness available in idleness can only be attained when free from vanity, obligation, and foresight. This specific form of idleness is also the only form that is morally and politically defensible. Though Rousseau argues, in the First Discourse, that the useless are pernicious, this is only true of the falsely idle that seek to undermine common morality and political attachment. True idleness, while still useless, satisfies Rousseau’s core moral principle to not harm.

Christian Bioethics: Reflections on a Quarter-Century with the Journal

This essay reflects on 25 years since Christian Bioethics began publication and, in somewhat autobiographical fashion, engages two core concerns. First, although “non-ecumenism” may often appear a pretext for contention and division, I suggest that a respectful non-ecumenism may provide the opportunity for dialogue and the occasion for employing certain tools from religious studies. Second, although many are skeptical about the possibilities of identifying a “common morality,” a defense of that notion provides a plausible explanation for the development of limited consensus on some issues in bioethics.

From Fashionable Frivolity to ‘Addicted Abandon’: The Changing Moral Discourse on Fashion’s Excess from the Middle Ages to Today

In Medieval and Puritan times, moralists framed the following of new fashions and the pursuit of novelties as frivolity, pride and excess, while today discourses about overconsumption, unsustainable industry practices, and distance from producers take on ethical and moral tones sometimes being attributed to greed or apathy. This research traces these moralizing discourses and the terms they use, comparing particular fashions or dress behaviours that were considered immoral on the basis of wastefulness of time and resources (including money) in each time period. In Medieval times, long trains and wide sleeves were often considered wasteful and frivolous by moralists. Likewise, in the Puritan era, the extravagant use of time in preparing complex appearances was condemned. Today, the Western world’s consumption patterns are seen to be problematic. This research looks for patterns and similarities among the damned fashion practices, and highlights the differences in ways the discourse is framed. For example, in Medieval and Puritan times, morality was framed in relation to God and sin, while present day discourses assume a common morality that overlooks God or religion.

From Fashionable Frivolity to ‘Addicted Abandon’: The Changing Moral Discourse on Fashion’s Excess from the Middle Ages to Today

In Medieval and Puritan times, moralists framed the following of new fashions and the pursuit of novelties as frivolity, pride and excess, while today discourses about overconsumption, unsustainable industry practices, and distance from producers take on ethical and moral tones sometimes being attributed to greed or apathy. This research traces these moralizing discourses and the terms they use, comparing particular fashions or dress behaviours that were considered immoral on the basis of wastefulness of time and resources (including money) in each time period. In Medieval times, long trains and wide sleeves were often considered wasteful and frivolous by moralists. Likewise, in the Puritan era, the extravagant use of time in preparing complex appearances was condemned. Today, the Western world’s consumption patterns are seen to be problematic. This research looks for patterns and similarities among the damned fashion practices, and highlights the differences in ways the discourse is framed. For example, in Medieval and Puritan times, morality was framed in relation to God and sin, while present day discourses assume a common morality that overlooks God or religion.

The Bible and Ethics in Chinese Society

Confucianism, the dominant ideology of Chinese culture, exerts significant influence on how Chinese Christians read the Bible for ethics. Confucian pragmatism and emphasis on ethics causes readers to accentuate the ethical function of the Bible. Early converts in the nineteenth century championed a common morality between the Bible and Confucian classics as an apologetic strategy. The Confucian ethical framework of “inner sageliness and outer kingliness” has been widely adopted by Chinese interpreters, informing how Christian intellectuals read the Bible for “national salvation by character” in the early twentieth century. When Christianity became rooted in China, Confucian concepts and maxims continued to be used to help Chinese understand the Bible. Besides Confucianism, other factors that shape how an interpreter reads the Bible for ethics include the reader’s historical and social context, theological tradition, and intellectual and educational background.