Timothy Murphy has done those of us in the field of bioethics a great service by being forthright about how irreligious centers of power work against theology and theologians. This has opened the door to direct and honest conversation about some facts that were previously known but rarely discussed publicly. Now, eight years after Murphy’s important article appeared in the American Journal of Bioethics, there is room to engage the facts and arguments surrounding the role for theology in the field. (...) It is important, first of all, to agree that if theology is to be excluded while other normative traditions included this must be defended on the basis of a coherent set of defensible claims, not merely raw assertions and power plays. Once the field comes to terms with the fact that no coherent set of defensible claims exist which can justify excluding theology from the field, this will create the conditions for the possibility of the kind of intellectual solidarity which can transform bioethics into a field that is at once much more diverse and inclusive while also of its very nature interested in robust debate which includes references first principles and metaphysical foundations. (shrink)

Although many of the pioneers of present-day bioethics came from religious and theological backgrounds, the recent controversy about the role of religion in bioethics has elicited much attention. Timothy Murphy would ban religion from bioethics altogether. Much of the ado hinges on conflicting understandings of just what bioethics is and just what religion is. This paper attempts to make more explicit how the fields of bioethics and religion have been understood in this context, and how they should not be understood. (...) We begin by looking at bioethics as a field: its origins, purpose, scope, and its methods. We then examine the notion of religion, looking especially at its importance for bioethics. Humanity is not just Homo sapiens but also Homo religiosus. Religion is more than a code of ethics; it gives insight into many of the foundational matters of bioethics. (shrink)

Most modern ethicists and ethics textbooks assert that religion holds little or no place in ethics, including fields of professional ethics like medical ethics. This assertion, of course, implicitly refers to ethical reasoning, but there is much more to the ethical life and the practice of ethics—especially professional ethics—than reasoning. It is no surprise that teachers of practical ethics, myself included, often focus on reasoning to the exclusion of other aspects of the ethical life. Especially for those with a philosophical (...) background, reasoning is the most patent and pedagogically controllable aspect of the ethical life—and the most easily testable. And whereas there may be powerful reasons for the limitation of religion in this aspect of ethics, there are other aspects of the ethical life in which recognition of religious belief may arguably be more relevant and possibly even necessary. I divide the ethical life into three areas—personal morality, interpersonal morality, and rational morality—each of which I explore in terms of its relationship to religion, normatively characterized by the qualities of devotion, diversity, and reasoning, respectively. (shrink)