Introducing Christian Ethics

Core Convictions for Christians Today

By: David P. Gushee

Narrated by: David P. Gushee

"A comprehensive one-stop manual on what it means to live Christianly." (Peter Enns, author of The Bible Tells Me So)

What does it mean to be a Christian in today's turbulent world? After every disillusionment and debate, what convictions survive? Dr. David P. Gushee is an influential voice in American religious life as an ethicist, pastor, and activist. He's advocated on issues ranging from torture and climate change to truth in politics and LGBTQ inclusion. He coauthored the pivotal Kingdom Ethics, a Jesus-based ethics textbook, and has written numerous books and hundreds of opinion pieces on what Christianity has to say about how we should live. Now, in this ambitious new book, Gushee sums up his many years of teaching and experience to provide a definitive, comprehensive vision of the Christian moral life.

With 25 easy-to-digest sections, Introducing Christian Ethics offers listeners a way to understand how to situate moral reasoning not only in scripture, but also in tradition and human reasoning. It offers a focus on Jesus and the disinherited, and a nuanced rethinking of the kingdom of God and its meaning for Christian ethics. Drawing on Gushee's own work and life story, but also a richly diverse set of sources, it covers general principles like virtues, truthfulness, love, and justice. And it discusses issues like creation, patriarchy, white supremacy, abortion, sexuality, marriage, politics, crime, and more.

This new book is groundbreaking in its breadth. Early reviewers around the world are describing Introducing Christian Ethics as an inspiring guide to finding core Christian convictions in a post-evangelical world.

©2022 David P. Gushee (P)2022 David P. Gushee

Important, well-researched, balanced, practical

Gushie achieves something extraordinary in this important book: he reviews all the major issues of our time, turns them inside out, as if in a prism, to really see all sides, and then places the life and teachings of Jesus at the center of the prism which allows the reader to reexamine these complex ethical dilemmas and questions as if for the first time. What I particularly appreciate is his commitment to rigor in the research, naming each author and their birth and death, where appropriate, giving context for every point he makes. The structure of the book makes it easy to follow and exciting, as each chapter builds a foundation for the next. The discussion questions at the end of each chapter are brilliantly crafted to encapsulate the essence of the meaning and forces the reader to see the relevance and urgency of examining these issues in their everyday walk with Christ. Many times he offers his own personal account of how he wrestled with ethical issues which I found mostly helpful. What I enjoyed most about the book is the way he invites the reader into scripture, with curiosity and confidence, challenging what are often very political interpretations of the Bible that are used to defend dehumanizing cultural norms, and leading us back to the example of Jesus as the moral beacon. I found the concluding chapters on why it is so hard to follow Jesus particularly helpful, comforting, and inspiring. I am eternally grateful to Gushie for offering us this important ethical study.