By Anindita N. Balslev from The Global Spiral. "When scholars approach a vital human emotion and shared value like compassion, they are confronted with a range of questions. First, how do we understand compassion? How has it been analyzed and interpreted in the cognitive discourses that are associated...

by John Tierney in The New York Times "Does religion have a future? Who looks more like an evolutionary dead end: the religious American or the agnostic European? Or will both give way to some sort of compromise — people bound by new institutions that provide the social benefits of religion without...

by Nathan Heflick in Psychology Today "Feeling a little bit less in control? Research suggests you are more likely to believe in the controlling power of your government, and God. Aaron Kay (professor at The University of Waterloo) and colleagues have recently tested a model of compensatory control...

By: Kathleen McGowan "Why does being bad feel so good? Pride, envy, greed, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth: It might sound like just one more episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, but this enduring formulation of the worst of human failures has inspired great art for thousands of years...

In February, Union University in Jackson, TN will host a conference called "Making Men Moral: The Public Square and the Role of Moral Judgment." The dates of the conference are February 25-27, 2009. Speakers at the conference will be professors known for their work in ethics and morality, including...

This Washington Post editorial uses information from various fields to argue that moral virtue does not have its origins in religion. Source: The Washington Post A growing sector of world civilization is secular; that is, it emphasizes worldly rather than religious values. This is especially true of...

Source: The University of Chicago Chronicle Using a $4.2 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, University scholars are seeking intellectual contributions from scientists and humanists for an interdisciplinary project on virtue. Project leader Jean Bethke Elshtain, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller...

By Oliver Putz Recent advances in evolutionary biology and ethology suggest that humans are not the only species capable of empathy and possibly morality, suggesting that the concept of the imago Dei could be extended to accommodate moral species other than our own. Read the article . Image from Flickr...

By Noreen Herzfed Sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything. Few of us live the monastic life. We spend our days in a world of work filled with technologies that vie for our attention. And we return at the end of those days, not to a cell, but to an equally busy home and family. Yet the...

By Wioleta Polinska Whether compassion for all beings in Buddhism, or “love of enemy” in Christianity, unconditional love signifies one of the principal concerns of all world religions. The profound wisdom of various religious traditions has inspired many to embrace the ideal of universal compassion...

Abstract: The article presents a reflection on the consequences of European intellectual society abandoning its religious ideological history. It is asserted that the Europe of the 21st-century refuses to acknowledge its religious roots and that as a result its lack of ideological foundation could lead...

One of America's foremost political theorists explores the connections between our political and ethical convictions, changing forever the way we understand the notion of "sovereignty." Throughout the history of human intellectual endeavor, one concept has cut across arenas as diverse as...

Abstract: What role do religious communities, groups, and associations play – and, what role should they play – in our thinking and conversations about religious freedom and church-state relations? These and related questions – that is, questions about the rights and responsibilities of religious institutions...

Abstract: In his first encyclical letter, Deus caritas est, Pope Benedict XVI describes the Church as a community of love. In this letter, he explores the organized practice love by and through the Church, and the relationship between this practice , on the one hand, and the Church's commitment to...

Abstract: Interest in the insights of psychology has become part of our culture. Psychological solutions are advanced for a whole host of moral dilemmas. How should an ethically-minded Christian include insights from such disciplines as psychoanalysis, cognitive moral development and neuroscience in...

"At the core of the book lies a new form of virtue theory based on the emotions. Distinct from deontological, consequentialist, and teleological virtue theories, this one has a particular theological, indeed Christian, foundation. The new theory helps to resolve philosophical problems and puzzles...

Abstract: In this essay, I consider - in the context of our ongoing debates about capital punishment - the question, "what role ought religious beliefs play in a pluralistic democratic society that often presumes strict boundaries between matters of private faith and political life?" I suggest...