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Being Responsible in the Public Domain

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Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice

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Abstract

The call to be responsible in the public domain is addressed here through a particular rendering of the discipline of a public theology. It is assumed that the intention of such a theology is to nurture the common good, a civil society, the flourishing of all. The Christian faith is thus placed among a ‘company of strangers’ and a relative reliance upon middle axioms like justice, dignity and responsibility as it seeks to engage with contemporary issues—such as (a). what constitutes climate justice? (b). what kind of tensions must a culturally diversifying democracy negotiate for the sake of an agreed basis for dignity and justice? These two concerns are discrete; at face value they are not intimately inter-related. They are being situated in this argument alongside the rhetoric of call and responsibility due to the self-understanding of a denominational church and how it engages with the nation in which it finds itself. The praxis of the Uniting Church in Australia is informed by a Statement to the Nation that was made public at its inception in 1977. That Statement was built upon a belief in a “Christian responsibility for society being regarded as fundamental to the mission of the church”.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Breitenberg [1].

  2. 2.

    Breitenberg, ‘To Tell the Truth’, pp. 65–66.

  3. 3.

    Elaine Graham [7, pp. 99–100].

  4. 4.

    Uniting Church in Australia [34].

  5. 5.

    Uniting Church in Australia [35].

  6. 6.

    Social Justice Forum [32].

  7. 7.

    Muers [23] and Jenkins [12].

  8. 8.

    Cynthia Moe-Lobeda [22].

  9. 9.

    Junge [13].

  10. 10.

    Rajendra [27, p. 115].

  11. 11.

    Rajendra, Migrants and Citizens, pp. 114–15.

  12. 12.

    Niebuhr [25, p. 42].

  13. 13.

    William Schweiker, ‘Foreword’, in Niebuhr, The Responsible Self, p. xi; McKenny [18, p. 240].

  14. 14.

    McKenny, ‘Responsibility’, in Meliaender and Werpehowski, eds, The Oxford Handbook, pp. 242–251.

  15. 15.

    Kenny [14] and Simon [30].

  16. 16.

    Gordon [6].

  17. 17.

    Mulvey [24] and Uniting Church [36].

  18. 18.

    Schweiker, ‘Foreword’, in Niebuhr, The Responsible Self, p. x.

  19. 19.

    Budden [3].

  20. 20.

    The Revised Preamble [33].

  21. 21.

    Miller [21, pp. 70–74].

  22. 22.

    Miller, Justice for Earthlings, pp. 74–84.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., pp. 84–92.

  24. 24.

    Pope Francis [26], Paragraph 23.

  25. 25.

    McNeill and Engelke [20].

  26. 26.

    Hamilton et al. [9].

  27. 27.

    Marzec [15].

  28. 28.

    Elvey et al. [4].

  29. 29.

    Hamilton [10]

  30. 30.

    Ripple [28].

  31. 31.

    McMichael [19].

  32. 32.

    Gardiner [5].

  33. 33.

    Shue [29].

  34. 34.

    Shue, Climate Justice, pp. 162–79, pp. 208–43.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., pp. 4, 47–67.

  36. 36.

    Ibid., pp. 142–61.

  37. 37.

    McAdam [16, 17].

  38. 38.

    Skrimshire [31].

  39. 39.

    McKenny, ‘Responsibility’, in Meliaender and Werpehowski, eds, The Oxford Handbook, p. 237.

  40. 40.

    Hamilton [11].

  41. 41.

    Gustafson, ‘Introduction’, in Niebuhr, The Responsible Self, pp. 6–41 at p. 14.

  42. 42.

    Gerald McKenny, ‘Responsibility in Karl Barth and Modern Ethics’, Religion and Ethics Workshop, University of Chicago Divinity School, March 1, 2012.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Public and Contextual Theology Research Centre, Charles Sturt University, 16 Masons Drive, North Parramatta, NSW, 2151, Australia

    Clive Pearson

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  1. Shanghai, China

    Zhibin Xie

  2. York, UK

    Pauline Kollontai

  3. Pasadena, CA, USA

    Sebastian Kim

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Pearson, C. (2020). Being Responsible in the Public Domain. In: Xie, Z., Kollontai, P., Kim, S. (eds) Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5081-2_12

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