S3 A1 Assignment | Reflective Questions: Christian Ethics and the World

How does Moe-Lobeda frame climate change as an ethical issue? What are the implications of her approach?

She defines climate change as Climate Violence. It is rooted in race, class and global inequality. Those who are white, corporate and live in the global north have had the greatest impact on the climate, therefore, they hold a greater portion of Climate Debt. Her approach calls for a reckoning. She proposes a Christian response that includes repentance, lamentation, reparations and change of behavior that produces a more equitable and sustainable use of resources. 

What unique perspectives does Pae bring to discussions of peace and war from an Asian American Christian ethics standpoint?

Pae reflects on the history of U.S. military actions in Asia and its impact on Asian people, nations and immigrant populations. She challenges the persistent American mythologies about Asian people as vulnerable and dependent on U.S. intervention. She states that war is antithetical to peace. War can never bring peace. She points to the eucharist as a powerful Christian tool for remembering the victims of war, welcoming all to the table, and reconnecting body and spirit. 

In what ways can Christian ethics contribute to addressing global challenges? What are its limitations?

As Christians we have a clear mandate, through the life and teachings of Christ, to work for peace and justice. We are called to listen to the voices of the oppressed and to put our lives on the line to transform the world into one that welcomes and upholds human rights locally and globally. Unfortunately or religion has been coopted by empire. We not only have to work to dismantle white and global supremacy, but Christian supremacy as well. 

How does Moe-Lbeda frame climate change as an ethical issue? What are the implications of her approach?

Moe-Lobeda reframes climate change as a moral problem rooted in class, racism, and colonial history rather than a technical crisis. In her argument, she says the Global North owes a climate debt to the Global South. The debt is a result of the North’s “over consumption of atmospheric space”. Centuries of fossil fuel consumption and colonial extraction have produced wealth for some but death and displacement for those who have suffered the most and benefited the least. I like the phrases she introduced, “climate privilege”, “climate violence’, and “atmospheric citizenship. She implies that a debt is owed and needs to be repaid. We each have a role to claim and action to take, be it the individual, the church, government policy, or corporations. We all have a moral responsibility.

What unique perspectives does Pae bring to discussions of peace and war from an Asian American Christian ethics standpoint?

Pae’s central perspective is that Asian American identity is by way of war operations in Asia. It is not from immigrants themselves. She discusses how the Christian frameworks of war - pacifism, holy war, a just war, just peacekeeping, and realism – viewed Asian bodies as subjects instead of the created projection of the military. That projection encouraged by Niebuhr framed Asians as innocent and vulnerable, enabling the US military interventions as “protection” instead of domination. She suggests reimagining the Eucharist as political activism, a communal practice of resistance.

In what ways can Christian ethics contribute to addressing global challenges? What are it’s limitations?

From the readings to date, it seems that Christian Ethics has historically been seen as a critique tied to empire without a separate action plan. However, it does offer real tools to be used in addressing global challenges. It offers a shared language, such as debt, lament, and reconciliation. It also offers communal practices that can help sustain long-term commitments to justice. But here is the contradiction, it is a tradition shaped by the empire. A tradition we now look to for guidance on resistance. So, this makes it hard to claim Christianity as a resource for justice without addressing this contradiction directly.

Moe-Lobeda frames climate change as an ethical issue. Beyond the technical reality of climate change, she believes that climate change is a moral injustice perpetuated by the powerful upon the powerless. Those who contribute least to climate change suffer its worst consequences, while those most responsible are most protected. She has named this profound imbalance as, “climate debt.”

Climate debt restructures the climate crisis differently. Her portrayal is not a zero-sum analysis but a both/and view. For example, the climate crisis is more than an environmental problem. It is also a moral relationship because of the asymmetrical harm done by the wealthy and powerful to the poor and powerless. Climate change has largely been created by white privilege, colonial history, and globalized economic systems (which are in themselves, inequitable).

The implications of her approach are lucidly clear and compelling. Not everyone bears the same responsibility; wealthy high-consuming nations must lead the way with emission reduction as well as pay the cost of adaption and mitigation beyond their own borders. This work must include climate reparations to repay the climate debt. Moreover, this approach must go beyond the casual low-impact activities of “reduce, reuse, recycle” to wholesale transformation of economies, corporations, policy, and culture.

Our first-world moral identity needs to transform into what she calls, “atmospheric citizenship,” with global responsibility for repair on technical, moral, emotional, and spiritual levels.

Keun-Joo Christine Pae deepens the call for moral reckoning through her embodied experiences and academic inquiry. It’s not difficult to conflate Pae’s lens of memory, war, and empire with Moe-Lobeda’s moral critique of the climate crisis. The root causes are eerily similar and the themes are identical: power asymmetry, economic violence, and racism.

Pae’s writing compels me to think about “structural complicity.” She writes about participation in systems like higher education and what she calls, “capitalist militarism.” Peace, she writes, is not a personal stillness, but a collective structural practice. Thus, practicing peace is to confront the systems and institutions that perpetuate amoral and unethical relationships from individual to global scales.

Christian ethics reframes the climate crisis as moral issues not just technical issues. It gives us a path toward action by way of lament, repentance, and transformation. Christian ethics also can be a platform for consistent collective action with fewer easy to navigate “off-ramps from responsibility.”

Postscript: Rereading my work here, I realize that I’ve responded almost analytically to the prompts. I knew it while I was writing. The truth is, the climate crisis is, for me, a deep pit of lament and sorrow. When I was in architecture school in the 1970s, we studied climate issues and modeled various climate futures. All the worst-case scenarios are coming true. The world, led by the first world, is driving toward the destruction of every life-support system on the planet. I wish I could claim the moral high road, but I can’t. Engaging with this week’s work, I fear how dark my despair can be. I veer away. I’m praying for a different path.

M. Cross

Introduction to

  Christian Ethics

Dr. Lisa Asedillo

Lesson 3, Assign 1

Reflection

How does Moe-Labeda frame climate change as an ethical issue?

The author frames climate change as a manifestation of white privilege because of its disproportionate affect on the most impoverished.  It results in the most in need bearing the consequences of policies and practices.

The lack of consideration and disregard for the effects of climate change clearly and pointedly illuminates the ethical system of the privileged.  “As long as I/we get what I/we want, nothing and no one else is of importance “.  The decisions of the climate privileged enable their survival at the cost of the underprivileged.

The ethics, or lack thereof, of the advantaged elite becomes obvious.

What unique perspectives does Pae bring to discussions of peace and war from an Asian-American Christian ethics standpoint?

I found the perspective of Keun-Joo Christine Pae’s discussion very interesting as it is one that is rarely discussed.  As a person of Asian heritage, her perspective is unique and personal giving more credence to her essay.

Her formalization of America’s or any power’s rationalization for war or “war theory” and the mandatory ‘rules’ to justify war was particularly poignant.  Mapping out justifications for war rather than  for peace was striking.

That the US, with the most powerful military in the world would use this rationale today seems terribly authoritarian and power hungry.  Yet, though poorly applied, it’s  clearly seen today with the ‘war’ with Iran. The criteria for “just war theory”, has been loosely applied, if at all.

In what ways can Christian ethics contribute to addressing global challenges?  What are its limitations?

The moral framework of Christian ethics shapes how Christians discern right from wrong, cultivate virtue, and pursue justice everyday.  Challenges could be made globally if commonality in need and approach could be established.

However, unfortunately, in order to address global challenges, a universal moral standard would be required.  Because ethics differ globally, there would be minimal agreement.  Ethics consist of and consider cultures, histories, and power structures and in my mind, establishing commonality would be complex.

This week’s readings really stretched how I think about Christian ethics. In the earlier weeks, we stayed closer to the personal, such as the self, other, lived experience, and social location. This week felt different. It pushed the conversation out into the world and asked what Christian ethics looks like when we’re dealing with things like climate change, war, and systems of power. What stayed with me is that ethics can’t stay small. It can’t just be about personal choices. It has to ask who is being harmed, who is benefiting, and what systems are shaping those outcomes.

The reading on climate change especially shifted something for me. I’ve always thought of it as an environmental issue, but this helped me see it more clearly as a justice issue. The people who are hit first and hardest are often the ones who didn’t cause the problem. That doesn’t feel accidental. It feels connected to how power and resources are distributed in the world. It made me think about responsibility in a different way. Not just “we should take care of the earth,” but “who is carrying the burden, and what do we owe them?”¹ That question feels a lot harder, but also a lot more honest.

The reading on war also stayed with me, especially the focus on memory and whose stories get told. It reminded me that war isn’t just something that happens “over there” or in history books. It shapes people’s lives, identities, and how whole communities are seen and remembered. What really struck me is the idea that peace isn’t just the absence of conflict. It has to include truth, remembrance, and some kind of justice for what was lost. Otherwise, it feels incomplete.²

All of this made me think about what Christian ethics can actually offer. At its best, I think it gives us a language for dignity, accountability, and care. That language is not just for individuals, but for communities and systems. It can call out injustice and push us toward something more humane. But at the same time, I can’t ignore that Christianity has also been part of the problem in many of these systems. That part matters too.

So for me, the takeaway this week is that Christian ethics has to stay honest. It has to be willing to look at harm in the world, but also at its own history. That’s the only way it can actually contribute to something better.

References 

1. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, “Climate Change as Climate Debt: Forging a Just Future,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 36, no. 1 (2016): 27–49. 
2. Keun-Joo Christine Pae, “Peace and War,” in Asian American Christian Ethics: Voices, Methods, Issues, ed. Grace Y. Kao and Ilsup Ahn (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2015), 89–104.

Amanda Weaver

How does Moe-Lobeda frame climate change as an ethical issue? What are the implications of her approach?

Moe-Lobeda shifts the discussion of climate change from a focus on sustainability alone to a view of “climate debt” and “climate violence” bringing accountability to the forefront of discussion. This view brings colonialism, white privilege, and class status into consideration and asks the question of how we grapple with historical harm.  Climate debt also frames the harm perpetuated by the Global North as a debt owed to the Global South, who has borne the brunt of the impact. This approach suggests that, as a moral issue, solutions should include all aspects of society, secular/political and religious, in the repair of harm and payment of restitution. There is a role for both areas in calling out and making visible the harm, lamenting the harm, creating just systems and policies for moving forward, and addressing and repairing current and historical harm.

What unique perspectives does Pae bring to discussions of peace and war from an Asian American Christian ethics standpoint?

Pae examines peace and war from the perspective of how American wars in Asia have shaped the dominant perspective of Asian identity and how that perspective has been used to justify American actions. The various Christian perspectives on peace and war: pacifism, holy war, just war theory, just peacemaking, and Christiam realism have all have all played roles in creating and reinforcing the perspective of Asians as vulnerable others who need to be rescued/saved. She also presents the Eucharist as “early Christians’ everyday political activism infused with spiritual practice,” (p.101) and suggests that this can and should be extended into today’s practice as a way of intentionally remembering the victims of wars.

In what ways can Christian ethics contribute to addressing global challenges? What are its limitations?

Christian ethics can contribute to addressing global challenges by offering a way to describe and name issues as well as provide hope for moving from theory to action. In more limited ways, Christian ethics can also help cross some boundaries that exist between people of different nationalities and cultures. However, practitioners of Christian ethics must avoid the trap of thinking that their viewpoint is universal; that is how Christianity has become a tool of empire and colonialism. Instead, there must be space held for those who are not Christian and a willingness to engage with those outside of the circle of Christianity on equal terms.

Christian Ethics - Week 3 - Reflection - Ogundipe

1.     How does Moe-Lobeda frame climate change as an ethical issue? What are the implications of her approach?
2.     What unique perspectives does Pae bring to discussions of peace and war from an Asian American Christian ethics standpoint?
3.     In what ways can Christian ethics contribute to addressing global challenges? What are its limitations?

1

Moe-Lobeda frames climate change as an ethical issues in many ways, but her primary approach is viewing climate change through the lens of debt, specifically that debt of the global north who uses extracts and uses most of the resources that that lead to climate change, often from and to the detriment of the global south who uses a small portion of these resources yet pays the greatest price from this usage and is the least protected from climate change.

2

Pae also brings many unique perspectives, but the one that stands out the most is the idea of reimagining Asian American identity especially as regards the ways that Asian American identity has been shaped through US militarism. Pae suggests using the Eucharist as the basis of doing this. Through the Eucharist, Pae points out how we can center innocents and the “ghosts”, both living and dead, that are so often excluded in official rememberings. This exclusion and forgetting make it essentially impossible to arrive at healing or an ethics beyond the superficial, but in the kind of memory engaged with this Eucharist-centered approach a fuller remembrance is possible.

3

One of the ways that Christian ethics can contribute to addressing global challenges is through framing ethical questions about everyday realities from a Christian perspective. We see that in this week’s writings (i.e. How might we approach healing in regard to Asian-American identity and US militarism from a Christian perspective? What questions emerge from a Christian approach to climate change?). Through framing these questions from Christian base and exploring them through the tradition, we can generate both questions regarding global issues and explore means of navigating them through a Christ-centered lens. There are many potential limitations, for instance, will non-Christians view such an approach as worthwhile (even within the Christian tradition there is diversity, so can Christians come to a consensus on approach?). We also live in a country where, at least in theory, there is a separation between church and state. So, in that environment, what does it look like and how will it be received for the Christian prophetic voice to both speak to, frame approaches to, and execute change on issues that involve states, economic markets, etc? How will this be received (or does this even matter)?

Leonard Bailey

Reflective Questions:  Christian Ethics and the World

So Moe-Lobeda is basically saying that climate change isn’t just about the environment, it’s really about justice. The people causing the most harm aren’t the ones dealing with the worst consequences. It’s usually poorer communities and people of color getting hit the hardest. So she flips the conversation from just “let’s be eco-friendly” to “this is actually a moral issue.” That part stood out to me because it makes you think beyond recycling and stuff, and more about responsibility; who actually owes what and what it means to make things right.

With Pae, I feel like she brings a perspective we don’t usually hear. She shows how war isn’t just something distant, it actually shapes people’s identities, especially Asian Americans.  The way the U.S. has been involved in wars in Asia affects how Asian people are seen even today. And I thought it was real how she pointed out that we usually hear war stories from the American side, but not from the people who actually suffered the most. The Eucharist part was interesting too. She’s basically saying remembering people who were hurt or killed is part of doing justice, not just something extra.

As far as Christian ethics and global issues, I think it can definitely help because it pushes people to care about justice, compassion, and doing right by others, not just themselves. It gives people a reason to actually step up and not just be passive. But at the same time, it has limits. Like, if it stays too theoretical or if people use it to push their own agenda, it can miss the point. I feel like it works best when it’s actually grounded in real people’s experiences and when it’s open to learning from others, not just trying to be “right.”

  1. How does Moe-Lobeda frame climate change as an ethical issue? What are the implications of her approach?

The author lays out the ethical problem of disparity between the groups of people who have the greatest climate impact (broadly white & “wealthy,” overconsumptive; the global north) in contrast to those who will most detrimentally affected, at least more quickly, by the effects of anthropogenic climate change (those of the global majority, global south, “poorer,” people of color; the global south). While they acknowledge the intersectionality of identities and, therefore, complexity of complicity and victimization within these two broad categories, she posits that an equitable approach to economic, social, and other policies around require accountability based on the fundamental differences in how anthropogenic climate change is fueled primarily by the global north and victimizes the global south. They also posit that these regulations and thereby redistribution of technologies, monies, and other resources must be fundamentally based on the responsibility of privileged societies to aid those who will be most immediately ravaged by climate change.

While Moe-Lobeda uses a Christian theological framework for addressing this global problem, I find parallels in my own tradition of Pure Land Buddhism, especially around the notion of repentance. In Pure Land Master Shandao’s Commentary on the Contemplation Sutra, he emphasizes the importance of sincere repentance for committing karmic evil—which we could frame as harm to self and other in this context—in order to experience the fundamental transformation of our primal state of ignorance to the liberation of nirvana.

  2. What unique perspectives does Pae bring to discussions of peace and war from an Asian American Christian ethics standpoint?

There are so many! I was particularly struck by how she elaborated on the words of my friend Anuradha Bhagwati (who is a fellow Buddhist!) in speaking to how the US “...military continues to be used as a site to test Asian American’s loyalty to the United States,” and the intense violence of trying to force oneself to assimilate into this white cisheterosexist institution. I have observed this phenomenon mold the cultural and religious identities of so many Japanese-Americans in my community at temple alongside a strong sense of pride and resilience against forced assimilation and the model minority myth, and I found it really helpful to read these insights put into words.

  3. In what ways can Christian ethics contribute to addressing global challenges? What are its limitations?

Personally, as someone who has been harmed by religious abuse from Christians who uplift transmisogynist and otherwise exclusionary interpretations of scripture, I find it incredibly healing to witness the emphasis of centering the voices of those on the margins, as we have been doing in this class. I know this is not a practice exclusive to Christianity, as Ven. Shinran of my own tradition engaged in his own form of liberative interpretation of many Buddhist teachings, and I believe this is a really helpful practice for all of us to more carefully examine our privilege and the ways in which we may be perpetuating systems of harm. One limitation could be an over-emphasis on the particular, as in claiming that ethics is not possible without Christ, meaning that those from other religious traditions, or none at all, are capable of practicing ethics authentically. This is a limitation that is not unique to Christian ethics though, as I know plenty in my own community that hold very limited/limiting perspectives on ethics.

The implication of her approach is that Christian ethics must expand to include ecological justice as a core moral concern. Care for creation becomes inseparable from care for neighbor. Ethical responsibility is not only about interpersonal behavior but also about how we participate in or resist systems that cause harm. This reframes climate action as a matter of discipleship, accountability, and justice rather than optional environmental concern.