Gender and Christian Ethics

Description

In this book, Adrian Thatcher offers fresh theological arguments for expanding our understanding of gender. He begins by describing the various meanings of gender and depicts the relations between women and men as a pervasive human and global problem. Thatcher then critiques naive and harmful theological accounts of sexuality and gender as binary opposites or mistaken identities. Demonstrating that the gendered theologies of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Karl Barth, as well as the Vatican's "war on gender" rest on questionable binary models, he replaces these models with a human continuum that allows for sexual difference without assuming "opposite sexes" and normative sexualities. Grounded in core Christian doctrines, this continuum enables a full theological affirmation of LGBTIQ people. Thatcher also addresses the excesses of the male/female binary in secular culture and outlines a hermeneutic that delivers justice and acceptance instead of sexism and discrimination.

Adrian Thatcher is the author of twelve books, most recently Redeeming Gender (2016), and editor of The Oxford Handbook of Theology, Sexuality and Gender (2015).

'This book will unsettle many in the Christian ethical tradition but it will also impress many with its adroit use of biblical and theological scholarship and reasoned response to one of the crying moral issues of the day - gender discrimination ... Highly recommended.' F. G. Kirkpatrick, Choice Connect