Christian Bioethics

Bioethics, the Gospel, and Political Engagement The substantive center of Christian ethics is Jesus’s ministry of the kingdom or reign of God, and its preferential inclusion of the poor, the outcast, and the sinner. What defines a gospel-based bioethics is a hopeful, practical commitment to improve the health of those who are most vulnerable to illness and early death because they lack basic needs. This commitment is distinctive of Christian bioethics, if not "unique" in the sense that no other bioethical approaches or traditions share it. To succeed in reducing disparities in access to health care requires cooperative social action with members of multiple moral and political communities, meaning that there is no strict boundary between secular and Christian bioethics at the practical, political level, the level of applied Christian social ethics.

What is Christian About Christian Bioethics Revisited In this issue of Christian Bioethics, a diversity of Christian authors engage a central question in the field—what is Christian about Christian bioethics? This question has been answered as making a distinction between the character and content of ethical discourse within Christian communities as opposed to secular spaces. The question has also been answered as to how the character and content of a Christian bioethics is or ought to be Christian. The present authors engage both ways of answering the question. In this introduction, I offer brief reflections and reactions to each of these issues in hopes of providing clarity as to the distinctive claims of each.

God's Story and Bioethics: The Christian Witness to The Reconciled World In this article, I seek to put Engelhardt’s work on Christian bioethics in the wider context. First, I discuss some fundamental issues inextricably linked to his work: the difference and relation of a "secular world" to the Christian notion of the "world," the difference and relation between the concepts of "history" given with human "progress" appearing in the field of bioethics, in contrast to the Christian understanding of God’s story with His "world." These issues will be discussed in connection with the philosophical work of Karl Löwith and Jürgen Habermas, among others. Next, I critically discuss Engelhardt’s genealogical account of "modernity," in order to draw—with agreement—attention to this genealogy’s implications for the Christian epistemology needed for a proper understanding of human nature (the conditio humana). Discursive rational argument is not enough to secure a proper understanding of human nature, says Engelhardt. Yet, it will be shown that through the practice of Christian witness as a "good work"—which brings along with it different essential modes of understanding human nature—the Christian can encounter secular public discourse. I examine how the witness of a Christian ethos may contribute indispensable insights for public and secular discourse; this witness, I argue, implies radical consequences for medical research and treatment. Despite my general agreement with his work, one of my central theses will be that Engelhardt rests content too early in embracing an empty procedural account of the justice that can be achieved by the state. Christian witness can and ought to contribute more than this. 1

Bioethics After Christendom Is Gone: A Methodist Evangelical Perspective Though it is debatable as to whether the number of persons in the United States who ‘believe’ in something spiritual has declined, there is no doubt that the social authority of religious organizations has declined. Further, when people do hold explicit religious beliefs, they now tend to be asked to keep such to themselves, for the sake of manners or the ‘rights’ of others to ‘freedom from religion.’ Thus, at the end of Christendom, due to religious privatization and institutional marginalization, the legitimacy of Christian language and concepts in bioethical discourse is increasingly denied. Christians, therefore, must be able to explain (1) that their values are based on faith, (2) but that does not preclude the translation of those values in ways that allow cooperation with others, (3) though some beliefs will lead to conflict given the increasing denial of the intrinsic value of human life. The history of the secularization of bioethics is outlined, and the basis for cooperation between Christians and non-Christians described, even as the former maintain their distinct communities and values.

The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, But it Bends Toward Mercy and Grace: And Other Delightful Surprises of a Distinctively Christian Bioethics In this essay I describe some delightful surprises of Christian bioethics through the lenses of faith, hope, and love. I draw from insights about what makes Christian belief and practice distinctive from sources such as the early Christian document, The Epistle to Diognetus, G. K. Chesterton, and C. S. Lewis. I focus on the three theological virtues with a special eye for applications to contemporary bioethical issues and contemporary philosophical objections. Love is a distinctive center of Christian bioethics. Faith is a distinctive knowledge of Christian bioethics. Hope is a distinctive posture of Christian bioethics.

What Is Christian About Christian Bioethics? A Reformed, Covenantal Proposal This article argues that it is proper and helpful to distinguish a common bioethics from a distinctively Christian bioethics, and to regard both as legitimate and worthy of pursuit. "Common bioethics" refers to a normative moral inquiry seeking to identify the moral obligations regarding health care incumbent on all human beings, as created and sustained by God. "Christian bioethics" refers to a normative moral inquiry that explores how the reality of their redemption in Christ ought to shape the way Christians think about issues of life and death and thus practice and receive health care. Thus, what is Christian about Christian bioethics is not that faithful believers are its practitioners (although this is true), but that it investigates how moral reflection on life, health, and death is shaped by what is unique to the Christian experience—that is, salvation in Christ.

Bioethics and the Family: Family Building in the Twenty-First Century Rapid developments in reproductive technologies and shifts away from traditional religious commitments have led to significant changes in how marriage and the family are understood. Family building in the twenty-first century has become ever more post-modern: morality as it applies to family life has been fully deflated into various and diverse lifestyle choices. For many, Christian moral teachings regarding sex, reproduction, and marriage appear old fashioned and unenlightened. Such norms prudishly prevent persons from engaging in sexual relations, marriages, and divorces, as well as manipulating nature in ways that each finds pleasurable or otherwise individually fulfilling. Indeed, progressive activists have long endeavored to redefine the family, so that it would cease to be thought of as created through the monogamous and life-long bond of the marriage of husband and wife. The hope has been to bring other living arrangements, such as same sex partnerships and single motherhood, as well as artificial reproduction techniques and abortion, fully into the social mainstream. From homosexual marriage, to commercial surrogacy, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, in vitro fertilization and abortion, each author in this number of Christian Bioethics, diagnoses the growing cleft between the Traditionally Christian and modern society.

The Consumerist Moral Babel of the Post-Modern Family This paper offers a conceptual geography of the collision between the traditional Christian family, grounded in an experience of God, and the banality of its secular counterpart. Throughout the analysis, I appeal to an objective, fully canonical, binding standpoint: the God’s-eye perspective of Orthodox Christianity. The Christian family is not rightly understood as a culturally and historically conditioned social construction, created by a set of individuals, each seeking one’s own particular account of self-satisfaction. This paper embraces the Orthodox Christian recognition that the marital relationship should orient the couple, and their children, towards God and salvation. Everything, including the sexual union of husband and wife, as well as the conceiving and raising of children, is to be done in a way that is compatible with approaching holiness. Christians know that the family is a sacramental relationship forged with the blessing of God and only properly oriented towards Him.

Who Is My Mother and Who Are My Brothers? On the Christian understanding, life comes from God and every one of us is created in the Imago Dei; the child must not be treated as a commodity. Designed to satisfy adult desires, reproductive technologies bypassing sexual intercourse have led to new kinds of family not previously envisaged. These new kinds of family raise questions about adult attitudes towards children. In support of the Roman Catholic magisterial view, it is argued that gametal donation is unacceptable, because the gametes exchanged are treated as commodities, and so indirectly the child is also treated as a commodity. IVF and husband insemination are, however, deemed acceptable, because what matters is not whether the child is conceived by an individual act of spousal intercourse, but whether it is conceived within a loving spousal relationship between a man and a woman and welcomed as a gift.

Family Ties: A Catholic Response to Donor-Conceived Families The tension between affirmation of biological bonds and spiritual bonds in Catholic theology creates space for expressing serious worries about sperm and egg donation and for asking difficult questions about the widespread desire for forging genetic connections between parents and children. Both Catholic sexual teaching and Catholic social teaching point to the problematic nature of donor conception. Emerging social science data on the donor-conceived suggest that the teaching has explanatory power. Combining the two leads to a strong moral presumption against heterologous artificial fertilization. However, other elements of the Christian tradition (i.e., theology of adoption, the states of life available to Christians, and Jesus’ teachings on family) make possible a much more expansive understanding of family ties that raises questions about the need for donor conception while underlining the importance of welcoming the great diversity of existing families.

Religious Beliefs and Reproductive Counseling Practices in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod This essay will focus on an evaluation of authoritative documents of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) as they are applied to the moral status of the human embryo, reproduction, in vitro fertilization, and prenatal genetic testing. A research project compared religious beliefs and reproductive counseling practices of Roman Catholic priests, pastors from the LCMS, and rabbis affiliated with the Conservative branch of Judaism. A significant part of that study involved a 112-item survey that was mailed to a randomly selected sample of 1,300 congregational clergy drawn from those three groups. Survey results from the Lutheran pastors will also be reported and assessed. The results of the literature review and empirical study demonstrate that Lutheran clergy need to take the duty to be competent in their calling seriously by seeking appropriate clergy-specific education in reproductive counseling.

Seventh-day Adventism's Protestant Health Care Ministry in America Seventh-day Adventist health care in the United States routinely offers clinical services that utilize the full retinue of present-day, family-building, medical technologies. Whether through the practice of Adventist physicians or associated non-Adventist physicians, American Adventist health care hospitals and corporations serve their communities in ways essentially consistent with American societal values. Three broadly characterized Seventh-day Adventist subcultures (clerical, medical, and business) work together in typical American Protestant fashion in the effort to serve local communities. Sociopolitical dynamics among these three subcultures throughout the short history of Seventh-day Adventism demonstrates the difficulty of offering "the" Seventh-day Adventist answer to the question of how the Church is responding to modern family-building medical technologies.