Peter Singer and Christian Ethics, by Charles C. Camosy

Stanley Hauerwas argues that the deepest enemy of Christianity in North America is not atheism, but an undemanding sentimentality that many Christians apparently prefer to serious theological reflection. Sentimentality has made Christianity so superficial and boring, Hauerwas insists, that we can’t even produce interesting atheists.

As Oscar Wilde observed, “A sentimentalist is one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.” Sentimental stories and images—Richard Paul Evans’s heartwarming Christmas fiction or Warner Sallman’s Jesus with those big, lovable eyes—tell us to feel deeply without providing adequate cause. And such made-to-order emotion can suddenly pivot from oceanic approval to its shadowy twin, demonizing condemnation, in the same way that an alcoholic on a drinking binge may turn from weeping to rage in a heartbeat. Part of the appeal of sentimentality is its glib simplicity. In demanding a specific emotional response, it bypasses complexity for vague generalizations, rigid certainties and hasty assumptions about others’ intentions, as does much of what passes for political rhetoric these days.

It is this polarized backdrop that makes author Charles Camosy’s task so audacious: as a Catholic moral theologian, Camosy thoughtfully engages the work of the controversial and often condemned ethicist Peter Singer, the Australian-born professor of bioethics at Princeton University whose consistent application of secular preference utilitarianism (the idea that right action is that which fulfills the choosing individual’s interests) leads him to advocate for selective infanticide, active euthanasia and nonhuman animal rights. A wide range of critics, from advocates for disabled persons to the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, have loudly demanded that Singer be deprived of a public forum for his ideas.