Plurality and Christian Ethics

The first substantial study in Christian Ethics to explore the problem of religion, plurality and ethics.

Ian S. Markham (Author)

9780521453288, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 March 1994

240 pages
22.5 x 14.3 x 2.4 cm, 0.456 kg

'A work of admirable clarity and brevity by a Christian theologian who gives the reader a strong sense of the intelligibility of the Christian moral tradition.' Theology

Too many parts of the world testify to the difficulties religions have in tolerating each other. It is often concluded that the only way tolerance and plurality can be protected is to keep religion out of the public sphere. Ian Markham challenges this secularist argument. In the first half of the book, he advances a careful critique of European culture which exposes the problem of plurality. His analysis of the Christendom Group is contrasted with the outlook found in the USA, where a religiously informed culture may be seen to be tolerant. In the second half of the book, the author argues that plurality is better safeguarded by a theistic, rather than a secularist, foundation. He submits that too often secularists use relativist arguments, while theists want to appeal to the complexity of God's world. He concludes that in our post-modern world the religious affirmation of diversity offers genuine political possibilities for cultural enrichment.

General editor's preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: the secularist challenge
1. Plurality and secularism
2. Plurality, culture, and method
3. Plurality and the Christendom Group
4. The totality of the Christian narrative: capitalism and ecology
5. Plurality and contemporary British Christian ethics
6. Plurality and the American experience
7. Plurality and public philosophy
8. God and truth
9. Conditions for rational public discourse
10. Plurality and theology
11. Plurality and Post-modernism
Notes, Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ]