The nation-state is here to stay. Thirty years ago it was fashionable to predict its imminent demise, but the sudden break-up of the Soviet Union in the 1990s unshackled long-repressed nationalisms and generated a host of new states.
This document contains a summary review of the McDonald Centre's activities from 2008 to 2013.
The attached document sets out the main activities of the Centre over the 2012/2013 academic year.
Pacifism is popular. Many hold that war is unnecessary, since peaceful means of resolving conflict are always available, if only we had the will to look for them. Or they believe that war is wicked, essentially involving hatred of the enemy and carelessness of human life.
The attached report describes the development of the McDonald Centre's activities from 2008 to 2012.
While South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is widely regarded as a model of political ‘reconciliation’, Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s introduction into it of Christian notions of forgiveness is the subject of heated debate. What appears as Christian common sense to some, looks like a short-changing of justice to others.
In the face of ongoing religious conflicts and unending culture wars, what are we to make of liberalism's promise that it alone can arbitrate between church and state? In this wide-ranging study, John Perry examines the roots of our thinking on religion and politics, placing the early-modern founders of liberalism in conversation with today's theologians and political philosophers.
Too often, says Nigel Biggar, contemporary Christian ethics poses a false choice -- either "conservative" theological integrity or "liberal" secular consensus. Behaving in Public explains both why and how Christians should resist these polar options.
The leading journal Studies in Christian Ethics released a Special Issue on the subject of the 2009 McDonald Conference on Nicholas Wolterstorff's ground-breaking book, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton, 2008).
Must religious voices keep quiet in public places? Does fairness in a plural society require it? Must the expression of religious belief be so authoritarian as to threaten civil peace? Do we need translation into 'secular' language, or should we try to manage polyglot conversation? How neutral is 'secular' language? Is a religious argument necessarily unreasonable?
Controversy about the morality of euthanasia and assisted suicide and their legalisation has been running for over a generation, and it shows no sign of flagging. The main arguments for and against are widely familiar, yet the horizon yields no sign of any approaching resolution.
The McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics & Public Life is a research institute at the University of Oxford.