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Make the right decisions

Robin Gill commends a lively and lucid guide to religious ethics

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Do Morals Matter? A guide to contemporary religious ethics
Ian S. Markham

Blackwell £17.99 (978-1-4051-5378-2)
Church Times Bookshop £16.70

IAN MARKHAM first came to attention with his monograph Plurality and Christian Ethics (CUP, 1994), arguing that theologians today need to respond positively to political, cultural, and religious pluralism. Since then he has published energetically, defending theological liberalism and inter-religious dialogue.

He was a (very youthful) pro-fessor of theology at Liverpool Hope University before moving to the United States, first as Dean of Hartford Seminary, a liberal centre of Christian-Muslim dialogue, and now, recently ordained, as Dean of the prestigious Virginia Theological Seminary. Taught well by Brian Hebblethwaite and Keith Ward, he shares their logical, clear, and jargon-free prose. Would that all theologians did!

In Do Morals Matter? Ian Markham provides a lively and lucid introduction to religious (albeit predominantly Christian) ethics. In the first part, he sketches different approaches to ethics, based variously upon principles, consequences, natural law, virtues, the Bible, or secular humanism. He outlines each approach succinctly, indicating its relative strengths and weaknesses.

This is very familiar ground, and anyone trained in this area will discover nothing particularly new. He writes essentially for beginners. But, he is fair-minded, and sets out, for example, the views of Richard Dawkins and other critics of religious ethics without instantly dismissing them.

In the second part, he offers brief and, again, fair-minded discussions of moral dilemmas in a range of areas: sexuality, business, medicine, violence, government, and the environment. All of these are covered in just over 100 pages; so there is little opportunity for depth. His aim, instead, is to give an over-view of points of dispute in each area, only occasionally displaying his own preferences.

In the third, and much briefer, part, he finally offers his own moral views. Disarmingly, he writes in the introduction: “If you don’t want to be subjected to my ethical prejudices, then feel free to skip this section.” In the event, his views, although liberal on homosexuality, are otherwise relatively conservative. Influenced by the 20th-century American theologian Richard Niebuhr, he is particularly committed to the idea of the “morally responsible person” — that is, someone living an ordered, disciplined, and thoughtful moral life.

A distinctive and welcome feature of this book is that every chapter begins with a short case-study or thought-exercise. All are well chosen, and help to make the book user-friendly for those new to this crucial area.

Canon Robin Gill is Michael Ramsey Professor of Modern Theology at the University of Kent.

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