Professor Powell, who holds a joint appointment with Duke’s law and divinity schools, advocates a judicial approach in which individual conscience is central to constitutional decision making.

The language and ideals of the Constitution require judges to decide in good faith, exercising what Powell calls the constitutional virtues: candor, intellectual honesty, humility about the limits of constitutional adjudication, and willingness to admit that they do not have all the answers.

Constitutional Conscience concludes that the need for these qualities in judges—as well as lawyers and citizens—is implicit in our constitutional practices, and that without them judicial review would forfeit both its own integrity and the credibility of the courts

In keeping with the center’s mission to combine the study of theology with grassroots issues, each book in the series will reflect two voices: one from the field and the other from the academy. Each title will address solutions for reconciliation in areas of deep division on local and global levels.

Forthcoming titles will pair Chris Heuertz, director of Word Made Flesh, with Christine Pohl of Asbury Seminary on the power of countercultural friendship, and veteran activist John Perkins with historian Charles Marsh offering a vision for reconciliation in the post civil rights era.

More about the Resources for Reconciliation series.

Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice cast a comprehensive vision for reconciliation that is biblical, transformative, holistic, and global. Drawing on their experiences in Uganda and Mississippi, they bring theological reflection to bear on the work of reconciling individuals, groups, and societies. They recover distinctively Christian practices that will help the church be both a sign and an agent of God’s reconciling love in the fragmented world of the 21^st century.

In the second volume in the new series, Duke’s Stanley Hauerwas collaborates with Jean Vanier, founder of the worldwide L’Arche communities. Together, they explore the contours of a countercultural community that embodies a different way of being and witnesses to a new order—one marked by radical forms of gentleness, peacemaking, and faithfulness. The toughness of Hauerwas and the gentleness of Vanier offer a synergy of ideas that point the church to a fresh practicing of peace, love, and friendship.