Theres something disarming about a noon lunch break, a brown bag meal and a relaxed setting where one can talk informally with leaders or others in authority. Whether in workplaces, community organization life or academic settings, chemistry becomes better for dialogue and easy-going talk.
Imagine a noon bull session to talk ethics. At the University of Chicago Divinity School, Professor William Schweiker, the adviser for the Ethics Club, met over lunch with students. Together, they discussed The Future of Religious Ethics. They examined trends in the field and how the study of religious ethics can remain relevant, rigorous and challenging.
In a relaxed and intimate setting, according to the schools autumn-winter newsletter, Schweiker and other professors heard what students thought.
In the last academic year, the Ethics Club actually hosted six noontime meetings with professors of various schools on ethical issues. Topics included just-war theory, female circumcision, process theology and the war in
Iraq. The club also explored the challenges and daunting process for any one of them to begin the long work on a doctorate degree.
No doubt, they frequently draw from the rich stories of scripture for guidelines on what directly they would take in complicated and damned-if-do and damned-if-dont situation.
The Ethics Club takes its activities to bars for Pub Night where divinity students talk about topics in ethics, religion, current events and sports. The club wants to hold conferences on medical ethics and business ethics. They plan a fall workshop with University of Notre Dame students and other projects to explore knotty ethical problem.
Ethics tends to be a stepchild in broad studies of religion. Its a healthy exercise to lay out situations and the facts and encourage lively discussion on right and wrong, perpetrator and victim, fair solution versus the correct one. Those more authoritarian among us typically has fewer conflicts in arriving at the best means to settle problems.
Theologian John Wesley offered one of the simplest instruction for an ethical life: Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.
Given the shape of the world and the scandals du’jour, ethicsneed to make a comeback in personal and institutional behavior.
