Captive to Christ, Open to the World: On Doing Christian Ethics in Public

In his wide-ranging and engaging collection of interviews, Brian Brock discusses how Christian faith makes a difference to life in the modern world. Beginning with a discussion of teaching Christian ethics in the contemporary academy, Brock takes up environmental questions, political and medical ethics, the modern city and Christian responsibility for it, energy use, the information age, agriculture, political consensus and coercion, and many other issues. The reader is thus offered a broad and incisive discussion of many contemporary topics in a brief, illuminating, but never superficial manner. The unusual conversational style of the book allows strikingly clear, creative and concrete theological connections to emerge in the spaces between moral questions rarely thought of as linked. As the title suggests, the running theme of the interviews is being bound to Christ and placed into the contemporary world. Brock's theological readings of contemporary cultural trends are vigorous, unapologetic and insightful, and they offer delightful surprises as well as fertile new ways through the sterile impasses of many issues currently being debated in the public square.

Captive to Christ, Open to the World provides an accessible introduction to Brock's previous works and an excellent starting point for those interested in fresh theological insights into contemporary ethical questions.