Gilbert Meilaender

Professor of Theology
Phyllis & Richard Duesenberg Chair in Christian Ethics

Christian ethics from the White House to the classroom

Gilbert Meilaender

If you had told Gilbert Meilaender when he was a graduate student that his interest in bioethics would some day have him reporting to the President of the United States he would scarcely have believed you. But that is precisely what happened. Meilaender is one of 17 renowned thinkers and scientists sitting on President George W. Bush's Council on Bioethics.

A member of this prestigious group since its inception in 2002, Meilaender and his colleagues advise President Bush on stem-cell and cloning research, as well as other “hot button” medical-ethical issues, keeping the president and nation informed of new developments and providing a forum for discussion and evaluation. Meilaender says while the appointment requires a good deal of time, it has been an honor to work with other keen minds on bioethics matters that deeply concern him.

Though Meilaender was already well known among other ethicists, his appointment to the council raised his national profile. National Public Radio, Christianity Today, and PBS’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly have all called on Meilaender to share his thoughts about stem-cell research and cloning. And his 1996 work, “Bioethics – a Primer for Christians” was reissued in 2005.

How does the topic of bioethics fit into his broader work as a Christian ethicist? Because, Meilaender says, “It raises fundamental issues about what it means to be human, about the meaning of suffering in life, and the degree to which we try to take control of the future. I think anyone working in theological ethics might see this as an area of concern and interest.”

For his part, Meilaender, who is the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair in Christian Ethics at Valpo, is honored by his affiliation with the President’s Council on Bioethics but doesn’t want it overshadow the other things in which he is interested. Topics like vocation, Christian friendship, what it means to live a moral life, and most recently, how St. Augustine might have responded to the question of how best to lead a Christian life.

He has two books coming out in the next year: “The Freedom of a Christian: Essays on the Moral Life” which contains a series of essays on freedom Meilaender authored over the years, and “The Way that Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life”. Meilaender says he has been thinking about “The Way that Leads There” for quite a while.

“The book is about St. Augustine’s thought, and in other respects using his thought to consider perennial questions in the moral life. I had just started thinking about how I might craft this book when I was appointed to the President’s Council and that slowed my progress enormously!” he says with a laugh. “What I’m trying to do is not really what an Augustinian scholar would do, but what a theologian interested in the moral life would do with Augustine. I look at things like grief, duty, politics and sex as realms of life in which desire and duty intersect and use Augustine as the guide to discuss these topics.”

From the beginning of his career, Meilaender has contributed a tremendous amount to his areas of interest. He has been the recipient of two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships for College Teachers, and is a Fellow at the Hastings Center. He has served in editorial capacities for the Religious Studies Review, the Annual of Society of Religious Ethics, and First Things . He has served as Associate Editor of the Journal of Religious Ethics since 1992 and recently co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Theological Ethics. On top of all of this, Meilaender has written numerous essays, book chapters, and articles along with twelve books (including the two forthcoming works). It would seem fair to say that he loves to write.

“For me, first and foremost, writing is a matter of sorting things out and thinking things through. I don’t have any larger goals,” Meilaender says. “I’ve taught for 30 years and I know that not everyone is going to agree with me – I stopped worrying about that years ago.” And who is reading his work? Though colleagues and students of ethics admire Meilaender’s books, he says he hopes a wider audience consumes his writing. “I think a lot of what I write can be read by scholars in the field but by others as well. I’ll send a copy of my latest book to my mother,” he says with a smile.

What’s next on the horizon? Besides teaching, his editorial responsibilities, and serving two more years on the President’s Council, Meilaender says he’s recharging after five years of fairly frenetic activity. “ I’m just going think for a while. I have a few ideas about where I may want to turn and what I may want to do next, but I’m letting them percolate. I’ve got to take time to let the Muses come!”

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