What is the place of Christian love in a pluralistic society dedicated to liberty and justice for all ? What would it mean to take both Jesus Christ and Abraham Lincoln seriously and attempt to translate love of God and neighbor into every quarter of life, including law and politics? Timothy Jackson addresses such questions in Political Agape: Prophetic Christianity and Liberal Democracy. Jackson argues that love of God and neighbor is the perilously neglected civil virtue of our time and that it must be considered even before justice in structuring political principles and policies. To indicate the specific implications of civic agapism, he looks at such issues as the death penalty, Christian complicity in the Holocaust, the case for same-sex marriage, and the morality of adoption. The book concludes with Jackson s reflections on Martin Luther King Jr. as a Christian hero.

This book addresses key contemporary legal debates from the perspective of the central Christian ethical category of love, agape.

What is the relationship between the command to love one’s enemies and the use of violence and/or other coercive political means? This work examines this question by comparing and contrasting two important contemporary approaches to Christian ethics, neoAugustinian and the ecclesial or neoAnabaptist. It traces the complicated conversation that has taken place since John Howard Yoder took on Reinhold Niebuhr’s interpretation of the Anabaptists in the 1940’s. It consists of three parts. The first part traces the development of the Augustinian-Niebuhrian approach to ethics from Niebuhr through those who have advanced his work including Paul Ramsey, Timothy Jackson, Charles Mathewes, Eric Gregory, and Jennifer Herdt. It also examines the Augustinian ethics of Oliver O’Donovan, John Milbank and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Along with tracing the Augustinian approach and its trajectories through agapism, theology and the interpretation of Augustine, it identifies fifteen criticisms that this approach brings against the neoAnabaptists. The second part traces the origin of the ecclesial or neoAnabaptist approach, and then examines its relationship to, and criticism of, agapism, what theological doctrines are central and its interpretation of Augustine. Its purpose is primarily constructive by explaining the role that ecclesiology, Christology and eschatology have among the neoAnabaptists. The third part addresses the criticisms levied by Augustinians against the neoAnabaptists by drawing on the constructive theology in the second part. It intends to show where the Augustinian critics are correct, where they have missed key theological teachings, and where they misrepresent. It also assesses the summons to the nationalist project the Augustinians put to the neoAnabaptists. If this work is successful, this third part will not be defensive. It will instead illumine the reasons for the criticisms and suggest means by which the conversation that began between Yoder and Niebuhr can continue and possibly bear fruit for theological ethics in both its ecclesial and nationalist projects for generations to come.

Is it true that all we need is love? Does love capture the essence of Christian ethics? Does a love-centered ethic need to be impartial in a way that leaves no room at ground-level for relationships and projects? What is the place of well-being in an ethic of love? Loving Creation: The Task of Moral Life seeks to answer these questions by showing how a love-ethic and an ethic of creation are not at odds but rather reinforce each other. Gary Chartier articulates a love-centered creation ethic--or a creation-centered love-ethic--and applies it to such issues as sex, economic life, love for enemies, and political order. In the book, Chartier offers a powerful alternative both to natural-law theories that seem to lose sight of the welfare of actual people and to the accounts of Christian love that embrace an alienating impartiality. He develops an understanding of Christian love as focused on creation that can contribute effectively to enriching both social practices and personal lives. Loving Creation is unabashedly theological. But the theological considerations it adduces are ones that will allow Christians to engage in the public sphere with adherents of other religious traditions and of none. It is a contribution not only to theological understanding but also to personal moral reflection, to church practice, and to Christian participation in public life.