Gilbert Meilaender

My family and I moved last summer, moving to Valparaiso, Indiana from Oberlin, Ohio, where we had lived for eighteen years. Now, eighteen years is a reasonably long time in anyone’s life. It constitutes the bulk of the life of my children, and almost the entire life of several of them. It is by . . . . Continue Reading »

Religion and Medical Ethics: Looking Backward, Looking Forward Edited by Allen Verhey Eerdmans, 160 pages, $18 As bioethics has gained coherence as a discipline in recent years, it has given rise to a number of attempts to take stock of the nature and health of that discipline. Perhaps this is . . . . Continue Reading »

Testing the Medical Covenant: Active Euthenasia and Health Care Reform By William F. May Eerdmans, 146 pages, $14 If one has time to read only a single book on medical ethics in the near future, Testing the Medical Covenant: Active Euthanasia and Health Care Reform would be an excellent choice. As . . . . Continue Reading »

In Good Company: The Church as Polis By Stanley Hauerwas University of Notre Dame Press, 268 pages, $29.95 “I do not want to be told that I write too much. Tell me what you want left out and why.” With those words Stanley Hauerwas sets before us another collection of his essays. I will . . . . Continue Reading »

Integrity By Stephen L. Carter Basic Books, 261 pages, $24 I am probably the wrong person to review this book. Although I don’t much like playing card games, one that I do like a lot is a game called Rage . What I like about it is that players are “permitted” to cheat. Of course, if . . . . Continue Reading »

Almost forty thousand Americans are currently on waiting lists, hoping to receive a donated organ. Many of these”especially those awaiting a heart or liver transplant”face situations that are immediately life”threatening, and they will die if a suitable organ for transplant is not . . . . Continue Reading »

Theorizing Citizenship Edited by Ronald Beiner State University of New York Press, 335 pages, $19.95 What does it mean to belong to a political community? Is such belonging, which we call citizenship, important? What binds a body of people together in a political community and sustains their bond . . . . Continue Reading »

On the New Frontiers of Genetics and Religion By J. Robert Nelson Eerdmans. 212 pp. $12.99 We are badly in need of books that will help us engage in moral and religious reflection upon recent mind-boggling advances in genetics. Unfortunately, On the New Frontiers of Genetics and Religion will not . . . . Continue Reading »

Every spring a few of the better high school juniors in Ohio compete in the Ohio Tests of Scholastic Achievement. I imagine something similar happens in many other states. Although I pay attention to such matters only from a considerable distance, I was intrigued to learn about one feature of the . . . . Continue Reading »

Narratives of a Vulnerable God : Christ, Theology, and Scripture.  By William C. Placher. Westminster/John Knox, 188 pages, $14.99. Over the last several decades the academic study of religion has been marked by a debate that, put much too simply, pits a “Yale school” against a “Chicago . . . . Continue Reading »