Dirty Hands

by Fletcher, Garth Kasimu Baker

• ISBN13: 9780800630782
• ISBN10: 0800630785
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-05-01
• Publisher: Fortress Pr

Summary

How can one make the ethical and "right" decision in a deeply ambiguous moral world? Baker-Fletcher's basic introduction to Christian Ethics-with attitude-examines the fundamental ethical problems of moral decision-making, in which knowledge will always be unsure, time short, decisions ambiguous, and consequences multiple and unforseeable. Baker-Fletcher treats ethics as engagement, getting one's hand's "dirty with life." He employs a journey motif in order to aid readers in plotting their own "moralscape" (the fundamental commitments that affect their own decisions.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
The Problem: Ethics as Orders, Dis-Orders, and a Search	1	(18)
Invitation to a Journey	4	(3)
The Moral Landscape	7	(1)
The Problem with Obedience	8	(1)
Constructing a Journey Model of Ethics	9	(10)
Obedience, Absolutism, and Real Dirt	19	(24)
The Ethics Tool Kit	20	(4)
Which Community---Church or Society?	24	(2)
Points of Departure	26	(4)
Models and the Role of Scripture	30	(2)
The Centrality of Agape	32	(1)
Non-Christian Ethics	33	(3)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethic of Radical Grace	36	(3)
Implications of Bonhoeffer's Ethic for a Journey (Middle-Way) Ethics	39	(4)
Journey Moralscape	43	(30)
Historical Development of Moralscape Models	44	(7)
A Journey Moralscape	51	(7)
Using Critical Theory	58	(15)
Articulating Love-Justice-Power	73	(22)
What's Love Got to Do with It?	74	(2)
Luther and Dirty Hands	76	(8)
Justice	84	(3)
Power	87	(1)
Martin Luther King's Synthesis of Love-Power-Justice	88	(7)
Balancing Dirty Hands with Holiness: A Case Study	95	(10)
Intimate Boundaries	95	(4)
Sexual Ethics in a Conflicted Society	99	(6)
Real Dirt: Getting Our Hands Dirty with Life	105	(24)
The Journey of Holiness	106	(2)
Dirt and Others	108	(1)
Earth as Other	109	(17)
New Values	126	(3)
Notes	129	(12)
Index	141