Dissertationen zum Thema „Contributions in religion and ethics“

Water is one of the most precious elements on Earth. Yet we find ourselves in a global water crisis, struggling to address freshwater scarcity, pollution, climate change, and the need for safe drinking water and sanitation. Given the urgency of the global water crisis, it is imperative that we reinvent our relationship to water and cultivate an integral water ethic.

This dissertation, and the ethic it explores, is grounded in an integral approach to ecology that studies phenomena across multiple perspectives (e.g., natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities). Relating to water in an integral mode entails acknowledging that water has not only exterior, objective dimensions but also interior, subjective qualities. Thus, an integral water ethic holds that water is not a mere passive object to be exploited for human purposes; instead, this approach recognizes that water is an intrinsically valuable, vital member of the Earth community. An integral water ethic encourages humans to learn to cultivate love and compassion for water and for those suffering from the global water crisis. Through the cultivation of love and compassion for water, humans will be better able to see water not as a mere resource and commodity, but rather as a loving and compassionate member of the Earth community who nourishes all beings.

This dissertation explores three world religions (Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism) and considers the following contributions to an integral water ethic: sacramental consciousness of baptism, loving service of the Yamuna River, and compassionate wisdom of the bodhisattva. Contemplative practices for developing love and compassion for water are also shared. The purpose of this study is to draw attention to creative avenues for cultivating mutually enhancing relations between humans and water and thereby to help overcome destructive attitudes toward the natural world.

Abstract The proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations on December 10, 1948 gave birth to the contemporary human rights movement. Despite the worldwide influence the idea of human rights has enjoyed, the concept of human rights has been plagued by a number of criticisms. Among the most pervasive and persistent criticisms of human rights are that they represent an individualist viewpoint, and they are a relative product of Western society that are hardly universal. One purpose of this dissertation is to challenge these criticisms. However, in recent decades the idea of human rights has been expanded past its original individual focus to incorporate the idea of collective, or group rights. The juxtaposition of universal, individual rights with particular, collective rights raises anew the issues of individualism and universalism in the human rights debate. In this dissertation, I compare the work of the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, the Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, and the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum in order to yield a contextually sensitive natural law approach to human rights that will serve as a common justificatory basis for individual and collective human rights. This common justificatory basis is capable of addressing the questions of individualism and universalism generated by the theoretical tensions generated by the juxtaposition of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which enshrines individual, universal rights, and the more recent United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), which enshrines more particularistic, group rights.

This study deals with theories of community, justice, and freedom within liberalism, communitarianism, African philosophy and theology. The study maintains that there are different latitudes on how to formulate and articulate theories of community, justice and freedom informed by particualr moral experiences with bearing on different views of human. People differ and their claims on moral matters are influenced by contexts in which they find themselves, which means that cultural diversity has bearing on different interpretations of what it means to be a human being. Given the importance of this diversity, of particular significance in this study is the relationship between various theories of justice and freedom and different understandings of the relationship between the individual and the community. The study endorses that any contemporary discourse on community, justice, and freedom to be adequate should take notice on the political, economic, and cultural aspirations of the people it seeks to address itself. It argues that there might be alternative theories of community, justice, and freedom which may give a fuller appreciation to the fact that there are different understandings of what community implies as well as what justice and freedom means. One such alternative is the African view of human, that of "ubuntu", which maintains that "to be" is "to belong". In this view a person is because of others, and by inference one's humanity, including one's sense of personhood, is affirmed by affirming the humanity and personhood of others. The first aim of the study is to examine how we should understand different theories of justice and freedom within Western political philosophy, and African political theory and theology. The second aim is to analyse how different theories of justice and freedom are related to different conceptions of the relationship between the individual and the community. The third and final aim is to propose an adequate theory of community, justice, and freedom from an African perspective.

This dissertation will engage in a critical analysis of discourse related to the reception of migrant workers coming to the United States especially from Latin America. The thesis will propose that at the center of arguments for a more restrictive immigration policy in the U.S. is a construction of the immigrant as "other" and as a threat to the purity of American national identity. This construction will be examined historically, sociologically, and theologically, and will be contrasted with Christian theological and ethical models for dealing with human social and cultural difference, proposing an alternative approach of envisioning the immigrant as enhancing rather than threatening our identity as a people.

The analysis will include insights from anthropology, postcolonial and feminist thinkers, critical race theories, and a historical exploration of racial ideologies. Christian theological responses will include insights from Latin American liberation theology and the Aristotelian-Christian virtues tradition, along with a theology of reconciliation. The dissertation will also address political and economic aspects of immigration and the relationship between globalization (including NAFTA) and migration.

In this exploratory work I argue that Jesus’s particularity as a Jewish, male human is essential for developing Christian theology about nonhuman animals.

The Gospel of John says that the Word became “flesh” not that the Word became “human”. By using flesh, John’s Gospel connects the Incarnation to the Jewish notion of all animals. The Gospel almost always uses flesh in a wider sense than meaning human. The Bread of Life discourse makes this explicit when Jesus compares his flesh to “meat,” offending his hearers because they see themselves as above other animals. Other animals are killable and consumable; humans are not.

The notion that the Word became flesh has gained prominence in ecotheology, particularly in theologians identifying with deep Incarnation. Unless this notion is connected to Jesus’s particularity, however, there is danger in sacrificing the individual for the whole. We can see this danger in two early theologians, Athanasius and St. John of Damascus. Both of these theologians spoke of the Word becoming “matter”. Yet they ignored Jesus’s Jewishness and rarely focused on his animality, preferring instead to focus on cosmic elements. Consequently they often devalued animal life.

Jesus’s Jewishness is essential to the Incarnation. His Jewishness entailed a vision of creation’s purpose in which creatures do not consume one another, but live peaceably by eating plants. This Jewish milieu also entails a grand vision for transformation where predators act peaceably with their former prey.

Jesus’s maleness is also connected to his Jewishness. In the Greco-Roman context in which he lived, his circumcision marked him as less male and more animal-like. Moreover, Jesus’s Jewish heritage rejected the idea of a masculine hunter. His theological body was far more transgendered and connected to animality than the Roman ideal.

Finally, Jesus’s humanity entails a kenosis of what it means to be human. By becoming-animal he stops the anthropological machine that divides humans from animals. We see this becoming animal most clearly in his identity as a lamb, but also in Revelation’s idea that he is both a lion and a lamb. His eschatological body fulfills the Jewish vision for creation-wide peace.

The purpose of this thesis was to study the view of six teachers, working in three different field areas, on ethics questions and ethics teaching in schools, from a global perspective. My second aim was to analyze whether there was any cooperation between these different field areas or between them and others, in order to improve the ethics teaching in schools. My research questions were intended for one teacher in a Swedish school, three teachers in a Brazilian school, one Swedish missionary and one Swedish senior lecturer in ethics. The research questions basically centre on how these teachers would define concepts such as ethics and global ethics, what kind of ethics questions they feel are important for the school to convey and if there is any form of cooperation between teachers in Swedish/Brazilian schools and different organizations, designed to improve the ethics teaching in schools from a global perspective.

On the basis of the results of my questionnaires I find the definition of ethics more or less equal among the six teachers. They relate ethics to moral philosophy and other questions such as what is right, wrong, good and evil. The teachers also believe ethics contains a reflection on global matters, like the environment, poverty and peace. Five out of six teachers define global ethics with conceptions like global responsibility, respect for future generations, global consensus, comprehension and tolerance. One of the teachers does not believe in global ethics but in groups that could establish some common values to be achieved.

All six teachers feel it is important to bring questions related to Human Rights to the fore in schools. These ethics questions would touch on increased egoism, responsibility, respect for the environment, respect for differences, solidarity, tolerance, attitudes and sexual morals. According to the teachers these matters should be practiced and studied from a micro, macro and gender perspective.

My results show that cooperation does exist between the Swedish/Brazilian schools and different organizations and institutions. There is cooperation between The Church of Sweden Mission and Brazilian organizations, but there are no exchanges between Swedish schools and schools outside Europe. One way to improve ethics teaching and facilitate exchanges between schools from a global perspective could be to globalize the curriculum. With a globalized curriculum teachers could give the students the global context they need in global society.

The US wields the most powerful military in the history of the world, and deploys military personnel throughout the globe to fight, kill and die in atoned conflict. US veterans number around 22.5 million or about 14% of the US population. Some veterans, troubled by violence, enroll in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and receive care from mental health providers who have developed, through their particular framework, the medical constructs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and moral injury (MI) to diagnose and/or "treat" these veterans as "patients." The PTSD construct casts veterans as "patients with a disorder," minimizes legitimate moral pain, and enables the US public to avoid the work of reckoning with harmful consequences of US military action for which they hold ultimate responsibility. MI, a more recent and fluid construct, occurs at the intersection of religion and violence and thus invites the contribution of chaplains. A focused MI group for combat veterans within the VHA co-facilitated by a chaplain and psychologist provides veterans the opportunity for frame breaking and reframing and holds the possibility of systemic change in a response grounded not in individual therapy or treatment but rather in shared spiritual and moral community. A public ceremony with ritual and spiritual discipline creates sanctuary for veterans to provide adaptive leadership, as they transform themselves from patient to prophet, bearing witness to unsanitized and inglorious truths while the US public listens and wrestles with issues of culpability, obligation, and moral responsibility. The outcome is post-traumatic growth and spiritual development—indicated by greater moral engagement, awareness, forgiveness, and compassion. Such adaptive change may lead to increased resistance to militarism and greater reverence for all life on this fragile earth.