Church, State, and Family: Reconciling Traditional Teachings and Modern Liberties (Law and Christianity)
Cambridge University Press, 4/11/2019
EAN 9781107184756, ISBN10: 1107184754
Hardcover, 454 pages, 23.6 x 21.8 x 2.8 cm
Language: English
This book defends the fundamental place of the marital family in modern liberal societies. While applauding modern sexual freedoms, John Witte, Jr also defends the traditional Western teaching that the marital family is an essential cradle of conscience, chrysalis of care, and cornerstone of ordered liberty. He thus urges churches, states, and other social institutions to protect and promote the marital family. He encourages reticent churches to embrace the rights of women and children, as Christians have long taught, and encourages modern states to promote responsible sexual freedom and family relations, as liberals have long said. He counsels modern churches and states to share in family law governance, and to resist recent efforts to privatize, abolish, or radically expand the marital family sphere. Witte also invites fellow citizens to end their bitter battles over same-sex marriage and tend to the vast family field that urgently needs concerted attention and action.
Introduction
1. The first integrative Christian theories of family life
John Chrysostom and Augustine of Hippo
2. Marriage as an office of nature and a sacrament of the church
Thomas Aquinas and Francisco Vitoria
3. The marital family as social estate and covenant community
Martin Luther and John Calvin
4. The domestic market
the family as matrix of modern economics
5. The nature of family in seventeenth-century Christian thought
Hugo Grotius and John Selde
6. The surprising liberal defense of the traditional marital family by enlightenment liberals
7. The multidimensional family sphere
reconstructing traditional family teachings for modern liberal societies
8. Why suffer the children? Overcoming the modern church's opposition to children's rights
9. Why same-sex marriage should not lead to polygamy
10. By the power vested in whom? What place for faith-based family laws in a liberal democracy?
11. The dangers of private ordering
Concluding reflections.