Human Dependency and Christian Ethics New Studies in Christian Ethics Series

Dependency is a central aspect of human existence, as are dependent care relations: relations between caregivers and young children, persons with disabilities, or frail elderly persons. In this book, Sandra Sullivan-Dunbar argues that many prominent interpretations of Christian love either obscure dependency and care, or fail to adequately address injustice in the global social organization of care. Sullivan-Dunbar engages a wide-ranging interdisciplinary conversation between Christian ethics and economics, political theory, and care scholarship, drawing on the rich body of recent feminist work reintegrating dependency and care into the economic, political, and moral spheres. She identifies essential elements of a Christian ethic of love and justice for dependent care relations in a globalized care economy. She also suggests resources for such an ethic ranging from Catholic social thought, feminist political ethics of care, disability and vulnerability studies, and Christian theological accounts of the divine-human relation.

1. Human dependency, justice, and Christian love; 2. The marginalization of dependency and care in political theory; 3. Economics and the erasure of the care economy; 4. Sacrificial models of Christian love: distortions of need, nature, and justice; 5. Agape as equal regard: importing moral boundaries into Christian ethics; 6. Contemporary retrievals of thomistic accounts of love and justice; 7. Elements of justice for a dependent care ethic; 8. Resources for a Christian ethic of dependent care relations.

Sandra Sullivan-Dunbar is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Loyola University, Chicago, where she teaches feminist ethics, social ethics and sexual ethics. She holds a Ph.D. in Religious Ethics from the University of Chicago, an M.A. in Ethics and Social Theory from the Graduate Theological Union, a Master of Divinity from the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University, California and a Master of Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley.