Bible and Ethics in the Christian Life: A New Conversation

by Bruce C. Birch, Jacqueline E. Lapsley, Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda

Earth is changing in ways it hasn't for hundreds of thousands of years. At the same time, Christianity is breaking away from its millennium-long geographical and cultural center in the Euro-West. Its growth is in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, primarily in Pentecostal, evangelical, and independent churches. These dramatically changed planetary and ecclesial landscapes have led many to conclude that we need a new way of thinking about our collective who are we and what is the nature of our responsibility in this deeply altered world? To address that question, biblical scholars Bruce C. Birch and Jacqueline E. Lapsley and Christian ethicists Larry L. Rasmussen and Cynthia Moe-Lobeda carry on "a new conversation" that engages how Christians are to understand the authority and use of Scripture, the basic elements of any full-bodied Christian ethic attuned to our circumstances, and the nature of our responsibility to our planetary neighbors and creation itself.

296 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2018

Reviews

[Jim]

For those who want to work through a strong Christian ethic that is consistent with excellent biblical scholarship and contextual coherence, this is the book. Adding to the ethics discussion a sound basis for ecological ethics respecting the earth and all of creation, this is the book. This is not a one sit read, but it is filled with so many reminders of where it has been and where it is going that rather than being redundant, it is instructive.

[Emily Holladay]

I sat down to read this book for. DMin class, and I couldn’t put it down. The exposition of the Bible as a source for ethical and moral reasoning and action in Christian life is so artfully undertaken that it breathes new life into the process of ethical discernment. I really appreciated how the authors used the new terrain of creation care to show how we are currently undertaking this new dimension of Christian ethics. I highly recommend this book!

[Mike Koob]

Wow, Wen Stephenson, Wendel Berry, and Bill McKibben's work covered in extended section of this work. I am excited to see that.

Chapter 8, Witness and Practice

More than fifty folks gathered in the MUMC Social Hall Wednesday evening, Oct 17 for a talk by our own Rev. Dr. Bruce Birch with a focus on his new 2018 book, The Bible and Ethics in Christian Life: A New Conversation. Leading off the final section of the book he and his three coauthors “take a turn and go to the ‘real life’ use of Scripture as Christians engage the compelling issues in front of them.” First up here, they significantly engage Creation Care, Creation Justice, Global Climate Change, and Environmental Justice.
The work of three leaders are used to illustrate the ethical practice: Pope Francis’ 2015 papal encyclical Laudato Si’: Care for Our Common Home, Wendell Berry’s 1973 poem “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” and Bill McKibben’s 2013 Earth Sunday sermon at the Riverside Church, New York City. Wen Stephenson’s What We’re Fighting for Now Is Each Other: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Climate Justice is also cited and Stephenson lifts up Berry and McKibben as “Prophets”. By the way, McKibben is a United Methodist Sunday School teacher and perhaps the best known climate leader besides the pope!
McKibben, like Wendell Berry and the pope, has made every effort to spur an alternative to the dangerous course we are on. As he, and they, answer the basic question of ethics, How, then are we to live? he, too, engages the fundamental questions and tasks of Christian ethics-the descriptive, constructive, and normative; what is, what could be, and what should be. And he does so in ways that display an ethical method that is biblically sourced and informed. (p.243)
Read the book, read the chapter, and watch “McKibben at Riverside Church” on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geIni...