School:

Boston College School of Theology & Ministry

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Virtue Ethics

This course introduces the emerging field of Christian virtue ethics. The course begins with a study of the theological and philosophical theories of virtue that have shaped contemporary Catholic and Protestant accounts of virtue. Attention is given to the relation of virtue theory and the virtues to: the Gospels and the life of Jesus; the Christian community; theological anthropology; human happiness; the natural law; and moral norms. The course also discusses the academic and pastoral uses of virtue ethics through the examination of contemporary cases in light of the virtues.

School:

Boston College School of Theology & Ministry

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Fundamental Moral: Theological Ethics

This Level Two course treats Roman Catholic fundamental moral theology, focusing on both traditional and contemporary understandings of principal themes such as: The Nature and History, as well as a Methodological Model for Approaching Fundamental Moral Theology; The Moral Person and Moral Community; Conscience, Moral Norms and the Natural Law; Evaluations of Moral Acts; Sin (personal and social), Conversion and Reconciliation; Roles of Church Teaching (Magisterium) & Tradition in selected contemporary issues in the areas of sexual ethics, health care and bioethics, Catholics in the political arena will be discussed in terms of applying the fundamental themes of moral theology.

School:

Boston College School of Theology & Ministry

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Theological Critiques from the Margins

Dominant western and northern theology faces a critique from the margins of race, gender, age, sex, culture, and disability. This course explores the contexts of those critiques, key texts challenging the dominant narrative and its responses admitting injustice, dismantling structural sins, and beginning the work of communion, solidarity, reparation, and restoration to which the Gospel calls. Attention will be given to the advent of liberation and other context-based theologies in the developing world and the global north where the power to marginalize has been institutionalized yet where the cry of the poor is heard and signs of heeding emerge.

School:

Boston College Department of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Christian Ethics and Migration

This course examines the phenomenon of global migration from a Christian theological perspective. Texts from social scientific, legal, and policy perspectives will frame the phenomenon of contemporary migration. The seminar will then undertake ethical analyses of migration paradigms, policies and practices in light of resources from the Christian tradition, considering questions related to globalization, citizenship, economic justice, gender, family ethics, and integration.

School:

Boston College Department of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Biotechnologies, Health, and Theological Ethics

In dialogue with scientists, philosophers, and theological ethicists, the doctoral seminar examines current advances in developing scientific disciplines and studies their ethical challenges for health and society by relying on theological ethics. After reflecting on biotechnology in general, in its two parts the seminar focuses, first, on biotechnologies that directly affect human health by considering human genetics (genetic information, research, testing, screening, editing, therapy, pharmacogenomics, and enhancement), stem cell research, regenerative medicine, oncofertility, and neuroscience. Second, the seminar studies new biotechnologies that indirectly regard human health: synthetic biology, nanotechnology, cybertechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, posthumanism, and astrobiology.

School:

Boston College Department of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Social Reform and American Catholocism

How has American Catholicism interacted with the wider civil society? The course will examine individuals, groups and issues that have shaped the history of American Catholic involvement in social action, e.g. John Ryan and Charles Coughlin, the Central Verein and the Catholic Worker, slavery and church-state relations.

School:

Boston College Department of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Catholic Theological Ethics: 12-18th Century

A survey of the following major figures in theological ethics: Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Jean Gerson, Antoninus of Florence, Desiderius Erasmus, John Mair, Bartolom? de las Casas, Juan Gines de Sepulveda, Francisco de Vitoria, Dominic Soto, Bartolom? Medina, the Council of Trent (1545-1563), Francesco de Toldeo, Thomas Sanchez, Francisco Suarez, Antonio Escobar, Blaise Pascal, Alphonsus Liguori, Johann Michael Sailer, Johann Baptist von Hirscher, and Thomas Slater.

School:

Boston College Department of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Theology, Ethics, and Politics

How can Christian ethics respond to the intractability of historical evil and the difficulty of structural change? This course will work on the borderlines of political theology, public theology, liberation theology, Christian social ethics, and Catholic social teaching, reading for example, Bohoeffer, Moltmann, Solle, Day, Niebuhr, Murray, Hauerwas, Sobrino, Katongole, and additional examples of global Christian ethics and politics.

School:

Boston College Department of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Modern Catholic Social Teaching

This course will include historical and analytical treatments of the official social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. The course will study the tradition of Catholic social thought as found in papal, conciliar and synodal documents of the modern era.

School:

Boston College Department of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

HIV/AIDS and Ethics

This course looks at how we can understand a bit better the ethics of public health through the lens of HIV/AIDS. There besides studying the virus itself, we examine the varied related ethical issues regarding stigma, prevention, research, gender inequity, economic disparities, local culture, religion, funding, and access.

School:

Boston University Graduate Program in Religion

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Topics in Religion, Health, and Medicine

Topic for Fall 2022: Health and Medicine in Asian Religions. This seminar investigates how religious and moral narratives in Asian religions have informed understandings of the body in premodern and modern times. We will pay specific attention to how notions of embodiment and health surface in debates over gender differences. Our readings will focus on various traditions and geographic areas in Asia, with particular attention to East Asia

School:

Boston University Graduate Program in Religion

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Religion and the Problem of Tolerance

Explores the religious roots of tolerance as an alternative to secular, more liberal foundations for
pluralism. Grapples with the challenge of tolerance to the revealed religions and the ways different societies have met or failed to meet this challenge.

School:

Boston University School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Paradigms of Racism, The Ignorance They Hide, and the Harm They Sustain

Racism is ugly, painful, and seemingly inimical to understanding much less constructive intervention. When it comes to race, people often yell at, talk past, or simply avoid each other. Experiencing frustration, rage, and despair, some fear and may conclude that racism is intractable, even insoluble, while others "know" that racism does not exist. This course offers hope, exploring how groups of people form and defend competing systems of truth (that is, "paradigms") that hide ignorance and sustain harm. By discussing eight "paradigms" of racism and attendant forms of ignorance, we seek to enlarge our understanding as a basis for concrete practical steps that could be taken by different people in different sites.

School:

Boston University School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Literature and Ethics

Good ethical conception and practice often demand that we see things from others' points of view. Great novels, plays, poems, and films are good at helping us to reach empathic perceptions of particular people and situations by involving our intellect and emotion. Novels, tragic dramas, and others have the capacity to make readers identify with fictional characters in ways that show possibilities and potential vulnerabilities for themselves. This kind of empathic identification is important for good ethical practice in diverse and pluralistic communities. Narrative works of art are important for developing the human self- understanding critical for embodying certain religious and theological ideals. This course will explore the connections between literature (novels, plays, and short stories) and ethics: the relationship between creative imagination and moral imagination; the nature of moral attention and moral vision; the role of context-specific judging in ethical decisions. The course will help students to deepen and broaden their ethical understanding in ways that involve and give priority to context-specific moral evaluation, compassion, similar possibilities and vulnerabilities, eudaimonistic judgment, rather than abstract general principles for ethical judgment.

School:

Boston University School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Spirit & Art of Conflict Transformation

This course is a response to the experience of destructive conflict in the church and in the world, as well as the experience of religion as a source of conflict. More importantly, it is a response to the call to every Christian to be ministers of reconciliation and peacebuilders. The course will introduce students to the theology, theory and practice of faith-based conflict transformation, preparing students to become religious leaders equipped with fundamental tools and skills for engaging conflict and transforming conflict in a way that advances God's goal of shalom, a culture of justpeace.

School:

Boston University School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Watershed Discipleship

As a section of Practicing Faith, Watershed Discipleship explores place-based spiritual and theological practices in order both to connect students to the Boston watershed and to equip them with the skills needed to get to know and live responsibly in other watersheds they might inhabit in the future.

School:

Boston University School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Christian Social Ethics

Comparative study of historical and contemporary Christian approaches to the nature, sources, methods, and concepts of ethics in diverse contexts. The course is in two parts: an historical overview of the development of Christian social ethics from biblical times to the twenty-first century; an in-depth exploration of approaches to specific contemporary social issues including war and peace, ecology, economic justice, and equality.

School:

Boston University School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Introduction to Ecological Justice

This course introduces you to a variety of ecological justice issues through a combination of excursions, on-campus events, guest speakers, films, art exhibitions, and discussions. There will be 6 units total. You will be required to complete five units. Through this process, you will engage the theological, ethical, spiritual, and practical issues raised by a variety of ecological issues and by different responses to them.

School:

Boston University School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Engaging Ecological Justice

This course introduces you to a variety of ecological justice issues through a combination of excursions, on-campus events, guest speakers, films, art exhibitions, and discussions. There will be 6 units total. You will be required to complete five units. Through this process, you will engage the theological, ethical, spiritual, and practical issues raised by a variety of ecological issues and by different responses to them.

School:

Boston University School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Performing Ecological Justice

This course introduces you to a variety of ecological justice issues through a combination of excursions, on-campus events, guest speakers, films, art exhibitions, and discussions. There will be 6 units total. You will be required to complete five units. Through this process, you will engage the theological, ethical, spiritual, and practical issues raised by a variety of ecological issues and by different responses to them.

School:

Hartford International University

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Religious and Cultural Contemporary Ethics

This is one of two MAC core courses in which recent efforts in the interdisciplinary study of psychology/sociology are brought to bear on the field of theology, scripture, and ethics in the provision of care. Both courses explore the unique challenges that their subject matter poses to theological claims about God, humans, and the nature and meaning of healing or suffering. Both consider how the integration of theory and practice help a chaplain to examine the contributions that theology and religious traditions offer to analyze and address the subject matter. These courses aim to familiarize students with a particular field of knowledge or area of study and to deepen their ability to respond theologically to the complex challenges confronting challenged persons and communities.
The core course ?Religious and Cultural Contemporary Ethics? facilitates understanding of various ethical theories appropriate to professional context, spiritual and emotional dimensions of human development, organizational behavior, group dynamics, and political/social drivers like race, ethnicity, or gender. Making extensive use of case-studies and current journal articles, it addresses cultural or ethical challenges that particular contexts may bring to religious leaders. This course addresses the following Common Qualifications and Competencies for Professional Chaplains promulgated by the Board of Chaplaincy Certification, Inc.: ITP4, ITP5, PIC6, PIC7, PIC9, PPS2, PPS3, PPS7, OL1, OL2, OL3, OL4, OL5.

School:

Hartford International University

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Environmental Ethics

The Native American ?Tale of Two Wolves? tells of two evenly matched wolves in a battle. One is evil ? greedy, arrogant, lying, and full of fear. The other is good ? filled with love, hope, compassion, and integrity. The question is: which one will win? The sage?s answer: the one we feed.

The study of environmental ethics can easily devolve into a spiral of pessimism, given the unprecedented challenges we face regarding the climate crisis and other ecological threats to the well-being of our planet. We are tempted to ?feed the wrong wolf? and give into despair and a fatalistic resignation. Therefore, we will explore religious, philosophical, and environmental perspectives to help us understand the roots of the crises, as well as search for resources to help us ?feed the good wolf.? This course will equip students to work toward faith-based approaches to environmental ethics focused on justice and building community.

School:

Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology

BTI Category:

Ethics (all traditions)

Orthodox Christian Ethics

Christian moral theology is concerned with virtue not as an end in itself, but as an indispensable, challenging, and rewarding dimension of the Good Life, the Life in Christ. As such, a proper aim of Christian ethics is happiness, or rather blessedness; thus, St. Seraphim of Sarov's famous dictum: The goal of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. Taking our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Panaghia as our primary ethical models, the class considers the meaning and shape of 'right action' within the matrix of Uncreated Grace.