Christianity and the Laws of Conscience

This engaging collection of beautifully written essays provides the reader with a broad array of topics relating to Christian understandings of conscience. The authors reflect the interdisciplinarity of the book’s theme, with a balanced mix of scholars in biblical studies, theology, political science, philosophy, history, and law. The essays, unfolding more-or-less chronologically, reflect the historical development and theological diversity of Christianity, with Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Evangelicals, and Mormons represented. The book’s first part focuses on understandings of conscience in the New Testament and in early Christian thought, the relationship of conscience and natural law in scripture, and conscience formation in the Catholic tradition. The second part continues to lay a firm foundation, with informative essays on the early Church Fathers, Thomas Aquinas, the Magisterial Reformers, Enlightenment figures Pierre Bayle and John Locke, early American figures Roger Williams and Jonathan Edwards, Evangelicals, Mormons, and Pope Benedict. The final part covers applied topics in law and conscience, with essays devoted to constitutional protections of conscience (both federal and state), individual and institutional conscience claims against laws reflecting liberalized sexual mores, the just war tradition, and the role of conscience exemptions in a pluralistic society. This part analyzes court decisions that involve the conscientious objection to military service and the recent conscience claims of small businesses refusing to provide services for same-sex weddings, corporations refusing to provide contraception insurance coverage to employees, Catholic hospitals refusing to provide abortions and sex reassignment surgery, and Catholic adoption agencies refusing to place children with same-sex couples.

Christianity · Conscience · Enlightenment · Political science · Sociology · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies