Whose Church? Which Unity? That We May Be One: Practicing Unity in a Divided Church,Gary B. Agee,Eerdmans, 2022 (ISBN 978-0-8028-8186-1), xviii + 150 pp., pb $19.99 Winsome Conviction: Disagreeing Without Dividing the Church,Tim Muehlhoff and Richard Langer,InterVarsity Press, 2020 (ISBN 978-0-8380-4799-0), x + 214 pp., pb $17

These two recent books each offer guidance to Christians in the United States on pursuing unity in the midst of social, moral, political, and theological divisions. They offer two distinct approaches: one relying mainly on relevant academic research and the other drawing mostly on a pastoral appeal. They also target different audiences: one an explicitly theologically conservative evangelical ‘church’, the other a ‘church’ including all professed Christians. This review argues that both have different strengths. While Agee's approach is ultimately more promising for addressing the underlying causes of disunity among Christians, Muehlhoff and Langer offer well-founded tactics for mutual understanding within a more limited group of Christians.     

Book Review: Deborah G. Johnson (2020), Engineering Ethics: Contemporary and Eduring Debates,Yale University Press,New Haven and London, 2020, 189 + index,ISBN: 978-0-300-20924-2

Science and Engineering Ethics - This study investigates the ethical use of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies (BD + AI)—using an empirical approach. The paper...     

Review of: Svetlana Klimova: Russian Intelligentsia in Search of an Identity (Between Dostoevsky’s Oppositions and Tolstoy’s Holism), Leiden,Brill, 2020, Hardcover,ISBN 978-90-04-44060-9, $ 82,80

Studies in East European Thought -     

Accidental Communities: Race,Emergency Medicine,and the Problem of PolyHeme®

This article focuses on emergency medical care in black urban populations, suggesting that the classification of a “community” within clinical trial language is problematic. The article references a cultural history of black Americans with pre-hospital emergency medical treatment as relevant to contemporary emergency medicine paradigms. Part I explores a relationship between “autonomy” and “community.” The idea of community emerges as a displacement for the ethical principle of autonomy precisely at the moment that institutionalized medicine focuses on diversity. Part II examines a clinical trial for the blood substitute PolyHeme^® (Northfield Laboratories, Inc., Evanston, IL). It illustrates the ways in which bias in research paradigms and Institutional Review Board decisions attach to the notion and utility of the language of “community.” The conclusion's contemporary anecdote makes apparent the vitality of the issues of prehospital emergency medical care and the ways in which decisions and practices fall too easily into a narrative of culturally biased treatment.