Luke Bretherton, Ph.D., professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School and senior fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, has written a book that provides readers with a clear framework for understanding and practicing Christian ethics. 

How does Christian belief and practice relate to living well amid the difficulties of everyday life and the catastrophes and injustices that afflict so many today?

In A Primer in Christian Ethics: Christ and the Struggle to Live Well, Bretherton provides a new constructive framework for addressing this question. Connecting the theory and practice of Christian moral thought to contemporary existential concerns, this book integrates classic approaches to the pursuit of wisdom with contemporary liberationist and critical voices. The relationship between human and nonhuman life provides a central focus to the work, foregrounding environmental justice.

As well as addressing a broad range of ethical questions, Bretherton situates moral formation and the pursuit of human and nonhuman flourishing alongside a concern for spirituality, pastoral care, and political struggles to survive and thrive in the contemporary context. Written for those seeking a place to start, as well as those seasoned in the field, Bretherton's book provides an innovative ethical framework that moves beyond many of the impasses that shape current moral and political debates.

Bretherton is also the author of Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2019) and Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship, and the Politics of a Common Life (Cambridge University Press, 2014).