JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS最新文献

This focus issue considers the normative implications of the recent emergence in genome editing technology known as CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) or CRISPR-associated protein 9. Originally discovered in the adaptive immune systems of bacteria and archaea, CRISPR enables researchers to make efficient and site-specific modifications to the genomes of cells and organisms. More accessible, precise, and economic than previous gene editing technologies, CRISPR holds the promise of not only transforming the fields of genetics, agriculture, and human medicine, but also heralding a new era of democratized biotechnology. However, the speed with which developments in the field have progressed threatens to overwhelm our normative sensibilities about the long-term practical and ethical implications. The contributors to this focus issue attempt to think through some of the more salient moral and practical consequences of CRISPR in the context of religious ethics, particularly as they relate to themes of autonomy, human flourishing, social justice, and the ethics of enhancement.

Claiming close to 800 million adherents, Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religious community in the world; nevertheless, the movement remains under-researched, encouraging more academic investment. This article takes on this task by exploring Pentecostalism regarding gender and sex. Why have Pentecostals ardently supported gender normativity? Why have Pentecostal denominations in the United States adamantly opposed the recent Equality Acts bill? This essay's argument is that Pentecostal belief and practice, rooted in theology and pneumatology, actually denounce gender bifurcation, supporting instead fluid movement with the Holy Spirit into and out of gender performances. Judith Butler's performance theory, Sarah Coakley's Trinitarian theology, and Lisa Stephenson's imago Spiritus frame the overall argument. As Paul declares, there is no longer male or female in Christ.

Recent developments in genomic technology, especially those enabling gene editing, promise to put an end to hitherto intractable medical problems and to usher us into the age of personalized medicine. These technologies, however, raise a number of serious ethical challenges. Given the global impact of this technology, recent international regulations emphasize the need for intercultural dialogue on these ethical issues. This paper concentrates on Islamic perspectives on human genetic modification. It examines Islamic juristic discourses on the issue of genetic modification and highlights the different layers within these discourses. The paper identifies the main positions regarding human genetic modification along with the underlying arguments for each of them. In general, these positions are articulated in light of the nature as well as the intended objectives of the different procedures. The paper devotes special attention to the treatment-enhancement distinction and argues that within Islamic discourses this distinction is quite nuanced. The paper points out important substantive and methodological gaps and emphasizes the evolving nature of Islamic discourses on this issue.

Emmanuel Levinas's early work inaugurated a tradition of thinking about alterity as at odds with generalized forms of knowledge that characterize political institutions. However, in his later work Levinas broaches but leaves underdeveloped the provocative idea that institutional modes of reasoning can provide a welcome home for alterity if they follow the wisdom of love. Against this backdrop, I argue that reading G. W. F. Hegel's early writings on neighbor love alongside his mature philosophy of the state offers us important resources for articulating an institutional approach to alterity that offers a compelling solution to Levinas's concern with letting the other(s) be seen by institutions in a non-totalizing manner. Across his early writings, Hegel positions love as the vehicle through which one comes to be at home in the institutions of one's community and the vehicle through which one can revise and expand the institutions of one's community in novel ways. My aim is to demonstrate that Hegel's early account of love provides an indispensable blueprint for understanding his mature account of the relation between the individual qua infinitely unique and modern political institutions. In turn, this will enable us to discern the institutional approach to alterity embedded in his thought.

Shaul Magid's Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical (2021) stresses the American character of Kahane's thought. This review analyzes this claim in two ways. First, it offers a transnational perspective on Kahane's philosophy. Second, it examines Magid's concept of neo-Kahanism in light of Kahane's legacy in Israel.

Shaul Magid's Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical (2021) has the potential to urge American and Israeli Jews to “own” Meir Kahane and hold him up as a mirror reflecting the toxic and tragic dimensions of modern Jewish history. Such a look in the mirror can only happen once Jews see Palestinian suffering as central to the building of the state of Israel and also how they are complicit and implicated in such suffering.

This essay considers Shaul Magid's book on Meir Kahane and American Jewish politics through a discussion of the idea of modern Jewish “civility.” I argue that Magid's book enacts an argument that contemporary liberal Zionist politics are not as foreign to Kahanism as they might appear.

This essay overcomes the division between “principled” and “strategic” approaches to nonviolence studies by demonstrating that ethical analysis is key to understanding movement strategy. I show how the moral phenomenologies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Emmanuel Lévinas, figures usually treated by scholars of principled nonviolence, possess genuine insight for nonviolent strategists. With reference to each thinker and supporting evidence from the #BlackLivesMatter movement, I argue that nonviolent resistance makes a moral appeal through the medium of the body to the conscience of those bearing witness. Analysis of the way King combined moral reflection and strategic action recovers his legacy for the pragmatic tradition of social thought, while Lévinas's theory of the face offers additional considerations for nonviolent practitioners aiming for moral transformation at the local level. Studies that elucidate the complex moral dynamics by which nonviolent movements either succeed or fail will make the field a greater asset to practitioners.

The widespread receptivity of Jewish communities around the world to Meir Kahane demands that we reconsider our narrative of modern Jewish history and religious thought. His racism, calls for violence, and protofascism are startling, given the standard presentation that liberalism and assimilation mark the modern Jewish era. Even more startling is that Kahane's name almost never appears in the major surveys of American Judaism, the history of Zionism, and modern Jewish thought. Yet, Kahane's influence is growing rapidly and already outweighs the influence of most other modern Jewish thinkers and shows no sign of abating, especially with the rise of authoritarian regimes around the world.