“Show Me” Bioethics and Politics

Missouri, the “Show Me State,” has become the epicenter of several important national public policy debates, including abortion rights, the right to choose and refuse medical treatment, and, most recently, early stem cell research. In this environment, the Center for Practical Bioethics (formerly, Midwest Bioethics Center) emerged and grew. The Center's role in these “cultural wars” is not to advocate for a particular position but to provide well researched and objective information, perspective, and advocacy for the ethical justification of policy positions; and to serve as a neutral convener and provider of a public forum for discussion. In this article, the Center's work on early stem cell research is a case study through which to argue that not only the Center, but also the field of bioethics has a critical role in the politics of public health policy.     

The Development of a Code for Australian Psychologists

Section 35(1)(c) of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act (2009 Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act of 2009. (Queensland).  [Google Scholar]) requires the newly formed Psychology Board of Australia (PsyBA) “to develop or approve standards, codes and guidelines.” In 2010 the PsyBA decided to initially adopt the Australian Psychological Society's (APS) Code of Ethics (2007 Australian Psychological Society. 2007. Code of ethics, Melbourne, , Australia: Author.  [Google Scholar]) and develop a new code in the future with the involvement of key stakeholders without deciding what the nature of this code will be. The PsyBA now has to decide exactly how it will proceed in future. My aim in this article is to examine the options available to the PsyBA by exploring the definition and function of codes; presenting a history of the APS Code; and considering approaches that had been followed in Europe, Israel, New Zealand, and South Africa.     

Jihad Revisited

This article offers an overview of the various formulations of jihad during the first six Islamic centuries (7th–13th CE), showing them to be embedded in particular socio‐historical contexts. If the essential significance of jihad as righteous cause (i.e., action for the sake of a moral order) is shown to have been variously altered according to the needs and conditions of the Muslim community, significant possibilities arise for a contemporary understanding of jihad that is relevant to the needs and circumstances of the Muslim community today. Some features of the jihad tradition, although specific to a particular period and with little relevance today, continue to inform the current discussion on jihad. Discussion of the jihad tradition, then, should take care to distinguish the historically incidental features of the tradition from those with an enduring relevancy. By doing so, the jihad tradition will be able to contribute to discussions on the relation of religion to the public order and political organization, even those not limited to Islam.     

Everything you always wanted to know about therapy (but were afraid to ask): Social,political, economic and clinical fragments of a critical psychotherapy

Three seemingly consensual propositions concerning psychotherapy and counselling are examined critically. All turn out to be unreliable, tendentious and even damaging: (i) Psychotherapy and counselling can be free and independent professions provided therapists, acting together, fight for them to be that way. (ii) Psychotherapy and counselling are private and personal activities, operating in the realms of feelings and emotions – the psyche, the unconscious, affects rooted in the body. Above all other factors, the single most important thing is the therapy relationship between two people. (iii) Psychotherapy and counselling, and psychotherapy are vocations, not jobs. Therapists are not only motivated by money. In developing his critiques of these propositions, the author utilizes social, political and economic perspectives. The author reviews new clinical thinking on the active role of the client in therapeutic process and suggests that a turn to the legendary figure of the Trickster might be of benefit to the field. The author locates his arguments in his experience of the politics and practices of psychotherapy and counselling, and engages in self-criticism.     

Religion and Political Decision Making

Influential political theorists suggest that religious differences in political life may be overcome through shared commitment to political processes. In this article, I subject the underlying assumptions of this proposition to empirical inquiry. When faced with substantive conflict over policy outcomes, do religious persons defer to a political process for resolution? And if so, to which political process do they defer? Through a novel interview exercise with 61 respondents from a variety of religious backgrounds, I find a general willingness to defer to a legitimate political process, even if it results in an undesirable outcome that violates religious (or other) political preferences. However, I also find that a political process need not be democratic to be seen as legitimate, and that process preferences do not map onto religious differences.     

What Makes Politicians “Religious”? How Identity Congruence Shapes Religious Evaluations

How do Americans evaluate politicians’ religiosity? We theorize extra-religious “identity congruence,” the perceived correspondence between others’ group identities and our own, will powerfully shape evaluations. We test this expectation using data from two large, nationally representative surveys that ask Americans to rate the religiosity of prominent politicians. Consistent with our theory, the strongest predictors of how Americans rate politicians’ religiosity are their congruence on party identification and ideological identity as well as expected alignments with racial identity and Christian nationalism. Respondents’ religious characteristics are relatively weak predictors. And these trends hold regardless of Americans’ knowledge of leaders’ professed religious identity. Patterns are consistent with our theory even when we split samples by party. When we compare ratings between politicians who are widely regarded as irreligious to those who are regarded as conventionally religious, partisan congruence and racial identity largely mitigate the religious advantage of the latter. Racial identity also moderates congruence on key factors. Finally, identity congruence on party, ideology, and Christian nationalism follows expected patterns even among secular Americans for whom “religious” less intuitively implies “my group.” In a time of growing identity-alignment along partisan, ideological, racial, and religious lines, extra-religious “identity congruence” powerfully shapes how Americans evaluate politicians’ religiosity.     

(STILL) DISAGREEING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE: WHICH WAY FORWARD?

Why does climate change continue to be a forceful idea which divides people? What does this tell us about science, about culture, and about the future? Despite disagreement, how might the idea of climate change nevertheless be used creatively? In this essay I develop my investigation of these questions using four lines of argument. First, the future risks associated with human‐caused climate change are severely underdetermined by science. Scientific predictions of future climates are poorly constrained; even more so the consequences of such climates for evolving human socio‐technological and natural ecosystems. Second, I argue that to act politically in the world, people have to pass judgments on the facts of science; facts do not speak for themselves. Third, because these judgments are different, the strategic goals of policy interventions developed in response to risks associated with future climate change are inevitably multiple and conflicting. Finally, reconciling and achieving diverse goals requires political contestation. “Moving forward” on climate change then becomes a task of investing in the discursive and procedural preconditions for an agonistic politics to work constructively, to enable ways of implementing policies when people disagree.