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148After Lynn white: Religious ethics and environmental problemsJournal of Religious Ethics 37 (2): 283-309. 2009.The fields of environmental ethics and of religion and ecology have been shaped by Lynn White Jr.'s thesis that the roots of ecological crisis lie in religious cosmology. Independent critical movements in both fields, however, now question this methodological legacy and argue for alternative ways of inquiry. For religious ethics, the twin controversies cast doubt on prevailing ways of connecting environmental problems to religious deliberations because the criticisms raise questions about what c…Read more
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117The Turn to Virtue in Climate EthicsEnvironmental Ethics 38 (1): 77-96. 2016.Ethicists regularly turn to virtue in order to negotiate features of climate change that seem to overwhelm moral agency. Appeals to virtue in climate ethics differ by how they connect individual flourishing with collective responsibilities and by how they interpret Anthropocene relations. Differences between accounts of climate virtue help critique proposals to reframe global ecological problems in terms of resilience and planetary stewardship, the intelligibility of which depends on connecting …Read more
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81Environmental Pragmatism, Adaptive Management, and Cultural ReformEthics and the Environment 16 (1): 51-74. 2011.The field of environmental ethics hosts a debate between competing strategies of practical reason. Both sides of the debate share a commitment for ethics to address environmental problems, but strategies diverge over notions of what an ethic must accomplish in order to do so effectively. Should ethics critique the cultural worldviews that give rise to environmental problems and propose alternative environmental values, or should it develop practical responses to problems from broadly available c…Read more
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22Climate Justice: Ethics, Energy, and Public PolicyJournal of the Society of Christian Ethics 32 (2): 198-200. 2012.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Climate Justice: Ethics, Energy, and Public PolicyWillis JenkinsClimate Justice: Ethics, Energy, and Public Policy James Martin-Schramm Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010. 232 pp. $20.00Religious ethicists are sometimes tempted to interpret climate change as symptomatic of a civilizational corruption so deep that practical responsibility seems nearly impossible. In its considered treatment of energy options and policy resp…Read more
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19Atmospheric Powers, Global Injustice, and Moral Incompetence: Challenges to Doing Social Ethics from BelowJournal of the Society of Christian Ethics 34 (1): 65-82. 2014.Problems that overwhelm moral agency challenge methods of ethics that prioritize social practices. This essay explains how climate change exceeds moral competencies, criticizes climate ethics for eliding the difficulties, and the attempts to vindicate a practice-based approach by arguing for the possibility of doing ethics from incompetent projects. However, because incompetence easily becomes the excuse of injustice, I illustrate the argument with an indigenous peoples' climate justice project …Read more
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17The Mysterious Silence of Mother Earth in Laudato Si'Journal of Religious Ethics 46 (3): 441-462. 2018.Laudato si' attempts simultaneously to disrupt prevailing global environmental discourse and to reorient central concepts in Catholic moral tradition by requalifying the meaning of dominion and by ecologically expanding human dignity. The image of Earth crying out to humans from within a kinship relation plays a central role in both arguments. However, the political consequences of those shifts remain vague because the “voice” of Earth remains silent in crucial loci of the encyclical's argument.
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15Introduction to Focus Issue on Laudato Si'Journal of Religious Ethics 46 (3): 404-409. 2018.The encyclical Laudato si’ can be read as a religious ethic in several different ways. Contributors to this focus issue read it as magisterial teaching, as environmental thought, as Global South criticism, as Latinx theology, and as philosophy of religion. Foregrounding South American and Latinx receptions, the cumulative argument of this focus issue is that LS represents a cultural event that invites interpretations from contexts and disciplines beyond North Atlantic theological ethics.
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13The Landscape of Reform: Civic Pragmatism and Environmental Thought in America (review)Environmental Ethics 29 (4): 427-430. 2007.
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11The future of ethics: sustainability, social justice, and religious creativityGeorgetown University Press. 2013.Ethics in the anthropocene -- Atmospheric powers: climate change and moral incompetence -- Christian ethics and unprecedented problems -- Global ethics: moral pluralism and planetary problems -- Sustainability science and the ethics of wicked problems -- Toxic wombs and the ecology of justice -- Impoverishment and the economy of desire -- Intergenerational risk and the future of love -- Sustaining grace.
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11Ethics after HumanityJournal of Religious Ethics 51 (4): 611-638. 2024.Can humanity survive climate change and mass extinction? Concepts of humanity assumed or implicit in the field at the founding of this journal are under critical pressure from multiple directions. Reading across schools of thought confronting relations sometimes called Anthropocene, this essay explains five tasks for religious ethics “after humanity:” (i) incorporate species-level relations of power and vulnerability; (ii) denaturalize planetary myth-making; (iii) undo colonial humanisms; (iv) r…Read more
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1Biodiversity and Salvation: Thomistic Roots for Environmental EthicsJournal of Religion 83 (3): 401-420. 2003.
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University of VirginiaRegular Faculty
Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America