Includes bibliographical references and index.

Norms -- Broadening concepts of moral deliberation -- Enlarging concepts of law and new appreciation of rules -- Variations of relationalism and a softening of situationalism -- Implementation -- Ongoing forms of institutionalism -- Politics in operational terms -- Rejection of accommodation and intentional alternatives -- Moral agency -- Attention to virtue and character -- Analyses of conscience -- Moral development and moral choice -- New frameworks -- Ethics in vocational and policy-making settings -- Liberation theology as a source of ethics -- Growing interest in comparative religious ethics.

This book surveys the major thinking about Christian ethics as found in books published or distributed in the United States from the mid-sixties to the end of the seventies. In the first half of the book, Professor Long updates the analysis he first expounded in 1967 in his widely praised study, A Survey of Christian Ethics. Part one examines the literature dealing with moral reasoning, thinking about laws and codes, and ethics done in terms of situations and relationships. Part two examines published work that stress the importance of institutions, politics in operational terms, and efforts to think of Christian fidelity as expressed in special communities outside or opposed to the civic mainstream. In part three Professor Long examines works concerned with the nature and function of the moral agent, covering such topics as attention to virtue and character, the nature and role of conscience, and thinking about the implications of moral development theory. Part four describes three new frameworks for doing ethics that have been developed during the last fifteen years: vocational ethics and policy studies; liberation theology; and comparative religious ethics.