This book is the seventeenth in the series New Studies in Christian Ethics. A number of books in the series have combined philosophical and theological skills as this book does, notably Kieran Cronin's Rights and Christian Ethics, Jean Porter's Moral Action and Christian Ethics, Garth Hallett's Priorities and Christian Ethics and David Fergusson's Community, Liberalism and Christian Ethics. In addition, the wider issues of biology have also been the concern of Michael Northcott's well received The Environment and Christian Ethics. All of these books closely reflect the two key aims of the series – namely to promote monographs in Christian ethics which engage centrally with the present secular moral debate at the highest possible intellectual level and, secondly, to encourage contributors to demonstrate that Christian ethics can make a distinctive contribution to this debate.

Stephen Clark's reputation both as a philosopher of real distinction and as a Christian ethicist is very high. He is a very productive author who always writes thought-provoking books which challenge many dominant orthodoxies. His early books soon established that his was an unusual and distinctive voice – notably his The Moral Status of Animals (1977) and The Nature of the Beast (1982) – with a particular concern about animals and the environment. His interest in the philosophy of religion and in theological concerns was clearly established in his subsequent books From Athens to Jerusalem (1984) and The Mysteries of Religion (1986). His most famous ambitious project to date has been the three volumes Civil Peace and Sacred Order (1989), A Parliament of Souls (1990) and God's World and the great Awakening (1991).