Comparative Religious Ethics: Everyday Decisions for Our Everyday Lives
The study of comparative religious ethics is at a critical juncture, given the growing awareness of non-Christian ethical beliefs and practices and their bearing on social change. Christine Gudorf is at the forefront of rendering comparative—and competing—religious beliefs meaningful for students, especially in the area of ethics.
Unlike other texts, Gudorf's work focuses on common, everyday issues—including food and diet, work, sex and marriage, proper dress, anger and violence, charity, family, and infirmity and the elderly—while drawing out ethical implications of each and demonstrating how different religious traditions prescribe rules for action. An introductory chapter reviews standard ethical theory and core elements of comparative religious analysis. Each chapter opens with a riveting real-life case and shows how religious ethics can shed light on how to handle the larger issues, without determining for the reader what a proper ethical response might be.
Helpful pedagogy, including summaries, questions, and list of readings, along with special chapter features, charts and photographs and a glossary, combine to make this new text most suitable for the wide array of courses in comparative religious ethics.
Unlike other texts, Gudorf's work focuses on common, everyday issues—including food and diet, work, sex and marriage, proper dress, anger and violence, charity, family, and infirmity and the elderly—while drawing out ethical implications of each and demonstrating how different religious traditions prescribe rules for action. An introductory chapter reviews standard ethical theory and core elements of comparative religious analysis. Each chapter opens with a riveting real-life case and shows how religious ethics can shed light on how to handle the larger issues, without determining for the reader what a proper ethical response might be.
Helpful pedagogy, including summaries, questions, and list of readings, along with special chapter features, charts and photographs and a glossary, combine to make this new text most suitable for the wide array of courses in comparative religious ethics.
- Publisher Fortress Press
- Format Paperback
- ISBN 9780800698614
- eBook ISBN 9781451426212
- Dimensions 7.5 x 9.25
- Pages 256
- Course Level Undergraduate
- Textbook Survey Texts
- Publication Date January 1, 2013
Endorsements
"Christine Gudorf has done it again. With Comparative Religious Ethics, she has made another scholarly, but at the same time extraordinarily lucid and engaging, contribution to the growing field of comparative ethics. Her multifaith analysis of everyday ethical issues, and especially her practical case studies, illustrate the fundamental premise of the comparative approach to ethics (and to theology or spirituality): that we cannot truly understand ourselves unless we try to understand those genuinely different from us."
—Paul F. Knitter
Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions, and Culture
Union Theological Seminary, New York
—Paul F. Knitter
Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions, and Culture
Union Theological Seminary, New York