Respect and Promote the Community of Life with Justice and Wisdom

Abstract

In developing a comprehensive ethical framework that addresses the underlying concern of human power and the entire range of issues around the development of genetic knowledge, issues that span medical, agricultural and cultural uses, The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's social statement Genetics, Faith and Responsibility, adopted August 2010, serves the role of “public intellectual.” This essay sketches the content of the statement and supports this claim in two ways. First, it exhibits the statement's theoretical underpinnings in demonstrating how the statement grows out of the fertile soil of recent decades' dialogue between science and theology. Second, it demonstrates how the statement synthesizes a moral imperative drawn from theological, ecclesial and philosophical elements for the “public square.” In proposing that the moral imperative should be “to respect and promote the community of life with justice and wisdom,” the essay identifies the general features and middle axioms that should guide a human society moving into the “biotech century.”