This article examines the changing scope and method of ecumenical public theology from the World Missionary Conference of 1910 until the present. Most changes were made in response to the changing ideological and political contexts. The collapse of liberalism and the social gospel was followed by a type of confessional ethics which arose directly out of the German Church Struggle. In opposition to this there emerged a realist ecumenical social ethics, much indebted to Reinhold Niebuhr, and of Ronald Preston. This (...) type of public theology and its distinctive ‘middle axiom’ method are examined and contrasted with the more recent public theologies which were influenced by liberation theology and grassroots movements. It is suggested that the ending of the Cold War and the fundamental changes that have taken place since September 11 2001 present a radically new kind of challenge to public theology. (shrink)

Most known technology serves to ingeniously adapt the world to the physical and mental limitations of human beings. Humankind has acquired awesome power with its rather limited means. Nanotechnological capabilities further this power. On some accounts, however, nanotechnological research will contribute to a rather different kind of technological development, namely one that changes human beings so as to remove or reduce their physical and mental limitations. The prospect of this technological development has inspired a fair amount of ethical debate. Here, (...) proponents and opponents of such visions of human enhancement are criticized alike for engaging in speculative ethics. This critique exposes a general pattern that extends to other nano-, bio-, or neuroethical debates. While it does not apply to all discussions of “enhancement technologies” it does apply to all ethical discourse that constructs and validates an incredible future which it only then proceeds to endorse or critique. This discourse violates conditions of intelligibility, squanders the scarce and valuable resource of ethical concern, and misleads by casting remote possibilities or philosophical thought-experiments as foresight about likely technical developments. In effect, it deflects consideration from the transformative technologies of the present. (shrink)

Some commentators have criticized bioethics as failing to engage religion both as a matter of theory and practice. Bioethics should work toward understanding the influence of religion as it represents people's beliefs and practices, but bioethics should nevertheless observe limits in regard to religion as it does its normative work. Irreligious skepticism toward religious views about health, healthcare practices and institutions, and responses to biomedical innovations can yield important benefits to the field. Irreligious skepticism makes it possible to raise questions (...) that otherwise go unasked and to protect against the overreach of religion. In this sense, bioethics needs a vigorous irreligious outlook every bit as much as it needs descriptive understandings of religion. (shrink)