Virtue in the key of justice: Reshaping Christian virtue ethics in light of white supremacy

"Virtue in the Key of Justice: Reshaping Christian Virtue Ethics in Light of White Supremacy" examines the rebirth of interest in field of Christian virtue ethics in the last thirty years. The dissertation argues that recent Christian virtue ethics has ignored matters of social justice to its detriment. In the course of this argument, the dissertation makes three claims: first, that Christian virtue ethics since the late 1970s has been written by scholars who have written from positions of relative societal power and privilege; second, that disrupting white supremacy a key social justice issue facing the United States and the Christian church today; and third, that a social justice-centered Christian virtue ethic can be an effective tool for working toward social justice and disrupting white supremacy. The early, foundational approaches to virtue ethics of Aristotle and Aquinas are considered in Chapter One. Chapter Two explores the rebirth of modem virtue ethics in the work of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre and theologian Stanley Hauerwas Chapters Three and Four offer an overview of the recent work of Christian virtue ethicists and popular authors of virtue, respectively, demonstrating that discussions of social justice tend to be absent from such works. Chapter Five brings the insights of three womanist theologians---Katie G. Cannon, Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas and Emilie M. Townes---to the forefront, privileging womanism as a dialogical partner and illustrating these theologians' understanding of the connection between virtue and justice. Chapter Six locates the dissertation in the ongoing work of both whiteness studies and the study of race and religion, and make the case for reshaping Christian virtue ethics to address the social justice issue of disrupting white supremacy. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of three social justice-centered virtues to be developed by white Christians and white churches interested in taking action to counter white supremacy.