Implicitly addressing the French Revolution, most of these Tales advocated avoiding revolution in Britain by changing the culture and composition of the ruling class. Critiquing the mores and rule of the aristocracy, Eliza Parsons, Maria Hunter, Mary Ann Hanway, Mary Charlton and anonymous others advocated admitting capable, genteel, nouveau riche merchants and professionals, or sometimes humane and competent country gentlemen, into the ruling elite. They also intimated that elite culture should consist of the proto-Victorian values championed by their exemplary merchants, professionals and/or country gentlemen and independent working women and by the marriage of “manners and morals” they modeled. Placing their exemplary protagonists in the wealthy mercantile, professional and gentry classes and showing these groups socializing and intermarrying accords with recent scholarly accounts of the conduct of these classes in the provinces, as they began to consolidate into a Victorian upper middle class.

Addressing adversity and hardships that readers were likely to encounter in ordinary life (falls into poverty or bankruptcy, loss of parents, lover, caste and home, malignant misrepresentations, sexual harassment, domestic cruelty), these fictions were described as novels. In modeling the idealized responses of characters from the mercantile and professional ranks or from the lesser gentry to suffering and misfortune, Eliza Parsons, Jane West, Elizabeth Bonhote, Mrs. Gunning, Elizabeth Helme, Anna Maria Bennett, Mary Meeke, Ann Howell, Isabella Kelly, Susannah Rowson and many anonymous authors promoted new, proto-Victorian values. Novels of Education addressed issues of parenting and upbringing up to and including courtship and centered on debates about filial obedience, especially in choice of a spouse. Marital Domestic Fiction debated issues related to adultery, divorce, widowhood, spinsterhood, and second marriages. Female Biography combined the two with elements of other genres to follow one or more characters through a “Life.”

Reflective civics is a duty and delight for free people, especially Americans, given our founding principles viewing citizenship as not only a right but also a duty and a matter of sacred honor. American schooling K-16, and civic culture, can redress our recent deficits of civic health and of individual mental and spiritual health by emphasizing the higher meaning provided throughout the study of, and civil discussion about, citizenship and self-government in both civil society and public affairs. Then sections on (a) Civic Friendship and Replenishing America’s Civic Capital – including renewal of civil society and voluntary associations; (b) A Sputnik Moment for Academia: Restoring a Higher Civics – emphasizing the need for professors and higher education leaders to provide guidance and a good example on renewing civics, and supporting its renewal in K-12 schooling and civic culture; and (c) Lincoln’s Higher Call – that a renewed civics across K-16 and American culture should emphasize the consensus-forging figure of Lincoln, his magnanimity and statesmanship in the Second Inaugural in particular, calling for “malice toward none” and “charity for all.”

The conclusion shows that the righteousness of faith is polyvalent: if faith is motivated by fear, as in Donatists and lax catechumens, it fails to justify; if faith is motivated by hope in Christ, as in converting catechumens, it justifies because it will obtain the grace of the Holy Spirit; if faith is motivated by love of Christ, as in the faithful, it justifies as the essential superstructure of righteousness in Christ. In every case, faith justifies as the crucible in which God transforms desire. As final examples, the conclusion considers the catechumen as an image of the process of justification and the baptized as an image of the state of justification, though it is a state characterized both by righteousness in Christ and by hope in future grace. Ultimately, faith is a proper theological mystery for Augustine because faith’s righteousness comes from its being saturated with Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Despite the colossal importance of Augustine in the history of justification, no comprehensive study on this topic has yet been written. Moreover, the prevailing view is that Augustine understood justification to be caused by charity, not faith. This book aims to re-center Augustine’s theology of justification onto faith, and its thesis is that Augustine developed multiple accounts of how faith justifies based on whether faith is motivated by fear (which fails to justify), hope (which will justify), or love (which already justifies). The introduction then establishes the fundamentals of justification for Augustine: Augustine understands justification to consist in forgiveness and interior renewal, interprets iustificare (to justify) as making righteous by grace alone, and understands human iustitia (righteousness) as a created gift distinct from God’s righteousness. Lastly, the introduction shows how justification was central to Augustine, both to counter Pelagianism and to explain the work of God operative in the actions of the Church.

The ‘logic’ of charity in modern Britain has been understood as ‘complex’ and ‘varied’: ‘a loose and baggy monster’. Charity after Empire takes this complexity as the basis for a new interpretation. First, the indeterminacy of the role and function of charity lay behind its popularity and growth. With no fixed notions of what they should be or what they should do, charities and NGOs have expanded because they have been many things to many people. Second, the messy practices of aid meant success could always be claimed amidst uncertain objectives and outcomes, triggering further expansion. Third, just as charity was welcomed as a solution to poverty overseas, its scope and potential were contained by powerful political actors who restricted its campaigning and advocacy work. Fourth, racial injustice, especially apartheid, shaped not only humanitarianism overseas but also the domestic governance of charity in Britain. It all resulted not only in the massive expansion of charity but also limitations placed on its role and remit.

To be adopted, health-producing policies need to be supported by the elites. Although everyone’s health suffers from economic inequality, the poor suffer more social murder. Creating awareness is the challenge. Countries have goals and becoming healthier is one that is possible for the US. Charities and philanthropies, which command great power, mostly serve the rich, and are unaccountable to the public, won’t create the awareness needed to produce health-generating policies. Public resources should benefit the public. The government has subsidized much technology that, once profitable, is given to private industry at no cost. To change American policies requires creating awareness of the problem, reaching an agreement on a potential solution, and some transforming event such as a market shock, invasion, or other stimulus. Various ways of creating understanding are presented. Telling stories is the most effective

Abraham Lincoln is the only president never to have joined a religious body. Although he was raised in a Christian home, he was more nearly identifiable as a deist, and considered himself a man of reason rather than faith. The civil war, however, presented him with conundrums in understanding how the war had come and why it was progressing so poorly, and he began slowly to incorporate more language into his thinking which looked for religious answers to his questions. His second inaugural address captures that questioning at its most famous length. Even then, his use of religious ideas is idiosyncratic, and cannot be easily identified with any formal religious confession.

This chapter argues that Augustine adopts a second-person perspective, which “is characterized by dialogical speech, shared awareness of shared focus with the second person, and an orientation to love that other person.” This perspective shapes his understanding of the moral life; it gives pride of place to second-person relations, whether in the virtuous love of God and neighbor or in the disordered friendship without which Augustine tells us he would not have stolen the pears. Examining three virtues – humility, mercy, and charity – the chapter shows how each of them can be understood only in terms of proper relatedness to some other person. Since these virtues are prominent in the Confessions but altogether absent from the Nicomachean Ethics, a close look at them reveals the considerable differences between an Augustinian and an Aristotelian approach to the virtues. It also sheds light on how to read Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas’ considerable inheritance from Augustine goes largely ignored by scholars focusing on Aquinas’s Aristotelianism. Attention to Augustine is accordingly crucial for a more balanced understanding of Aquinas; it also holds promise for future work in virtue ethics.

Love holds the most exalted place in the Christian account of the virtues. In this chapter we propose that our actions are most of all determined by what we love. If we want to find the motivation to make changes to how we live, in response to climate change, we can do that best by thinking through what it is that we love, and what that might require of us. We think about how love often involves some sort of restraint or letting go (as in marriage, where we ‘forsake all other’), not out of any cold disdain, but on account of the warmth that characterises our attitude to what we love most.

Action at scale on climate change is urgent. It is unavoidable that such action must for a period of some decades include restraint, because we do not have time to construct enough emissions-free substitutes for all today’s emitting activities. Leaders in politics and businesses cannot promote restraint without losing their jobs, so leadership must come from us, individually and collectively, making decisions to live differently. We can all act, at home and at work or in other teams. We can prioritise our most emitting activities, make changes where possible and, where it is for now beyond our reach, we can promote change through raising awareness of what matters and what help we need. These choices and actions are virtuous. Not ‘virtuous’ in the sense we parodied in the opening, of something admirable but prim and outdated, but a joyful, life-enhancing virtue that expresses the best of what we hope to be. The virtue of restraint in climate action is an act of leadership, an expression of faith and charity, and above all, an act of love.

This chapter examines early scholastic discussions of the ontology of grace and how grace is related to the theological virtues and other spiritual gifts conferred on the soul.