The Ethics and Society Program offers interdisciplinary studies centered on ethics and the sociology of religion. It fosters a scholarly conversation in which students are encouraged to draw deeply and widely on theological and philosophical traditions in ethics, while situating moral issues and public policies in their institutional and cultural contexts. Through the social, cultural, and comparative study of religion the Program prepares students to analyze the social institutions, everyday practices, and cultural expressions of religious life and moral discourse.

Students may concentrate either in ethics or in religion and society. They share work in social theory, social philosophy, and Christian social teaching to map the mutuality of moral meaning and social structures. Concentrators in ethics may combine studies in theological and philosophical ethics with special interests in social, political, professional or policy ethics (such as biomedical, environmental, or business ethics); moral development; feminist and womanist ethics; ethics and the Black Church; and comparative religious ethics, particularly in Judaism, Islam, or Hinduism. Students in religion and society may combine the sociology of religion, including the study of congregational and denominational life, with special interests in religion and American culture; Black Church studies; urban-suburban social change; moral psychology; and the sociology of morality, culture, or law.

Students in Ethics and Society are prepared for a wide variety of teaching, research, and administrative positions in academic and religious institutions. The resources available to them extend well beyond those of the Program itself. They enjoy extraordinary opportunities offered by Emory University's Center for Ethics in Public Policy and the Professions; Emory Law School's Law and Religion Program; and the Carter Center of Emory University, which includes a special focus on human rights and conflict resolution. Many students draw on offerings in other programs of the Graduate Division of Religion and in other departments of the university. These include Philosophy, Sociology, Anthropology, History, Political Science, Women's Studies, the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, and the School of Medicine. In addition, the greater Atlanta area offers such resources as the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change, several other major universities, and the faculties and libraries of the Interdenominational Theological Center and Columbia Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Ethics and Society Faculty

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im (Ph.D., University of Edinburgh, 1976) Professor of Law; Law and Religion Program. Islamic law and ethics; human rights.

Elizabeth Bounds (Ph.D., Union Theological Seminary, 1994) Associate Professor. Christian ethics, feminist ethics.

Michael Berger (Ph.D., Columbia University, 1992) Associate Professor. Jewish ethics.

Nancy L. Eiesland (Ph.D., Emory University, 1995) Associate Professor. Sociology of religion.

Robert Michael Franklin Jr. (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1985) Professor. Social ethics, psychology, African American religion.

Jon P. Gunnemann (Ph.D., Yale University, 1975) Professor. Christian social ethics and social theory.

Timothy P. Jackson (Ph.D., Yale University, 1984) Associate Professor. Christian ethics.

Alton Pollard (Ph.D., Duke University, 1987) Associate Professor. Southern Africa; African American religiosity; Pan-Africanist religious thought and practice; urban studies in the United States.

Don Seeman (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1997) Assistant Professor. Medical anthropology, anthropology of experience, Ethiopian-Israelis, anthropological approaches to Hebrew Bible, Judaism and Hasidism, violence and extremism in Israel.

Steven M. Tipton (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1979) Professor. Sociology of religion.

Associated Faculty

Theology:

Noel Erskine (Christology and ethics; Caribbean and Black theology)

Person, Community, and Religious Life, GDR:

James Fowler (Director, Ethics Center; faith and moral development)

John Snarey (moral development and moral psychology)

Law:

John Witte (Director, Law and Religion Program; church and state)