Overview

"The choice is clear: truth, justice, freedom or lies, injustice, bondage? The good life and a just society depend on truth telling, but perhaps we are more comfortable with lies and fake news? How can we recognize the truth when everyone does ""what is right in their own eyes""? When we accept and expect lies, how is civil society possible? How can we decide what is true, good, and right? If everyone has their own moral compass, is there any compass at all? This book addresses the skepticism about our capacity to know anything for sure and the inevitable consequences of moral relativism. The author says that skepticism and relativism cannot provide effective barriers against the drift by democracies into authoritarianism--characterized by the heavy use of state power to impose the culture of one kind of Me on us all. In the past religion provided a beacon of hope and as the bedrock for our society and its laws. Now, religion is confined to the private and often silent recesses of the person. How then can we speak of God, truth, power, and justice as a society? These are some of the questions that the book takes up. Long begins by saying that truth and freedom promote human flourishing and concludes by pointing us to how we can discern and practice truth telling as private citizens and as people of faith."

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9781945935503

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Reviews

With characteristic intelligence, erudition, and passion, Steve Long helps us see that the lie makes the achievement of justice impossible. Drawing on a storehouse of examples from history and the present, he shows how the refusal to tell the truth about wrongs makes impossible political alternatives to the lie. This is a book that can be read at many levels and hopefully will find its way to many readers. --Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Emeritus Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School and Duke University School of Law; and co-author of Resident Aliens With this important book, Long renders a great service to Christians and to this nation. Long dives to considerable depths in scripture, theology, and philosophy to analyze and respond to how America arrived at a President Donald Trump--and why so many purportedly Christian Americans support him. This is timely, brave public theology. --David P. Gushee, Distinguished University Profesor of Christian Ethics; Director, Center for Theology and Public Life, Mercer University; Past President American Academy of Religion, Society of Christian Ethics Change is constant in our world today--a seismic cultural shift in which we see a hunger for power and domination as well as an eagerness to believe deception in the guise of freedom. In this book Long invites us to sit with biblical figures and astute philosophers, challenging all to be beacons of light and bearers of truth so that the Church can transform the world and its many challenges as it seeks justice, truth, compassion, and beauty. --K.K. Yeo, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and Northwestern University

Author Information

D. Stephen Long is Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. Previously he worked at Marquette University, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, St. Joseph's University, and Duke Divinity School. Long works in the intersection between theology and ethics and has published over fifty essays and fourteen books. Long is also the editor of the Theopolitical Visions Series (Cascade) and the Ekklesia Series (Eerdmans). He is also past president of the Christian Theological Research Fellowship; founding member of North Shore Theology; Association; and member of the Society of Christian Ethics, American Academy of Religion, and Wesleyan Theological Society.

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