New Release Books by Ellen Ott Marshall

All Christians read the Bible differently, pray differently, value their traditions differently, and give different weight to individual and corporate judgment. These differences are the basis of conflict. The question Christian ethics must answer, then, is, "What does the good life look like in the context of conflict?" In this new introductory text, Ellen Ott Marshall uses the inevitable reality of difference to center and organize her exploration of the system of Christian morality. What can we learn from Jesus'' creative use of conflict in situations that were especially attuned to questions of power? What does the image of God look like when we are trying to recognize the divine image within those with whom we are in conflict? How can we better explore and understand the complicated work of reconciliation and justice? This innovative approach to Christian ethics will benefit a new generation of students who wish to engage the perennial questions of what constitutes a faithful Christian life and a just society.

This book charts a course through the equally inadequate options of despair and optimism to a responsible understanding and practice of Christian hope.

Christianity’s chief contribution to America’s civic life resides less in the ideas and positions Christians promote than in the way they go about promoting them. Debate about our shared life as citizens has always been a vigorous affair in American history. Yet recent years have seen a hardening of positions and a refusal to cross boundaries to cooperate or even understand those with whom we disagree. Not only in the rough and tumble world of political campaigns, but even in the historically more bipartisan world of governance, the American public square has become a fundamentally divided place. One reason for this situation, says Ellen Marshall, is an absolutizing of the ethical positions that underlie political commitments. Both the religious right and the secular left have couched their ideas in terms of unbending moral principles, certain in their possession of the truth. But Christian ethics teaches us that, while God''s truth is indeed absolute, our grasp of it never is. Recognizing this truth, Christians can more faithfully engage in the political sphere by: • Insisting on a rigorous and sustained exercise of the virtue of humility. • Charting a narrative understanding of Christian ethics, in which a rich description of the context of moral decisions is necessary to understand how right and how wrong they are. • Taking account of the moral ambiguity that resides in almost all human actions. Read the Introduction