Description
Ours is a time of moral crisis. Are evangelical Christians up to the task of contributing to the present ethical debates? All too often the evangelical church, when it has not abandoned the public sphere, has relied on protest over persuasion, laments author J. Daryl Charles. The results of its public witness within American society have not been encouraging. What is lacking, argues Charles, is a biblically based and theologically informed vision that can ground the moral education that should take place in the church and its institutions of higher education.
The Unformed Conscience of Evangelicalism fills this gap by reminding the evangelical church of its biblical and theological foundations for forming a unified personal and social ethic. After outlining the contours of such a moral vision, Charles issues a wake-up call for evangelicals to once again draw on the resources of the church’s Great Tradition and to reconfigure their priorities to serve the moral formation of the saints, their pastors, leaders and members. But more than this, Charles offers practical direction as to how seminaries, Christian colleges and individual congregations might go about shaping the character and conscience of the evangelical church.
Table of Contents
- The Cultural Moment and the Cultural Mandate
- Ethics and the Evangelical Legacy
- The Necessity of Ethical Formation
- Retooling the Evangelical Mindset: Ethics and Worldview
- Retooling the Evangelical Mindset: Ethics and the Permanent
- Biblical Resources for Ethics: The Pauline Model
- Biblical Resources for Ethics: The Petrine Model
- Biblical Resources for Ethics: The Disciple’s Model
- Toward a Biblical Ethic: Principles in Polarity
- Thinking with the Church
Epilogue
About the Author
J. Daryl Charles, PhD, serves as the Acton Affiliated Scholar in Theology & Ethics. He is author of eighteen books, including Natural Law and Religious Freedom (Routledge), America and the Just War Tradition (University of Notre Dame Press), and Wisdom’s Work: Essays on Ethics, Vocation, and Culture (Acton Institute Press), as well as editor of Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace, volumes 2 and 3 (Lexham Press).
