I am honored to write this foreword to Viewing New Creations with Anabaptist Eyes. Even though I did not participate in the conference that gave birth to this important book, I felt like a participant while reading the remarkable dialogue that occurs—different chapters address each other directly and indirectly and the book incorporates lively discussions involving give-and-take among the speakers as well as with the audience. Most volumes growing out of conferences are unsatisfactory, not only because the contributions are frequently uneven in quality but also because the chapters generally stand alone with little connection and interaction with each other. While differing in style—from the scientific and academic to the poetic and homiletical—as well as in content and length, the chapters taken together helpfully elucidate the import of fundamental Anabaptist perspectives and practices for an analysis and assessment of biotechnology. The participants in the conference and contributors to this volume generally identify with the Anabaptist tradition, broadly conceived, or are very conversant and sympathetic with that tradition and its theological-ethical perspectives. A prospective reader might wonder why it is necessary or even helpful to have another conference and another volume on biotechnology. After all, numerous conferences and volumes—both independent and derived from conferences—have addressed ethical concerns about biotechnology. Not all of them have engaged in secular philosophical or cultural analysis—many have been religiously oriented, attending to comparative religious perspectives or focused on the religious-ethical resources within a single tradition. However, the rich Anabaptist tradition has been largely, though not completely, absent from this discourse. Blame for this absence can probably find several legitimate targets. One source may be the general perception—sometimes consciously or unconsciously abetted by thinkers within or familiar with the Anabaptist tradition—that it is hostile to modernity, taking what sociologists like to call a sectarian stance or affirming what H. Richard Niebuhr described as “Christ against culture.” Now of course, just as culture has several different meanings and embodiments, so does modernity. As many of the Anabaptist perspectives recorded in this book reveal, it is possible to challenge or reject some aspects of modern culture without totally rejecting it, which, in any event, would be virtually impossible. Modern culture includes, inter alia, beliefs, values, and technologies. In this volume and elsewhere, Anabaptist thinkers appealing to Jesus often challenge the beliefs, values, and practices of biotechnology. While distinctive in many ways, their challenges frequently echo themes familiar from other forms of discourse as well—for instance, compassion and justice, which appear in other religious and even secular traditions too. Several writers stress that technology is not neutral: It is not a mere “fact” or a “tool” to which ethical assessment brings “values.” Instead, they probe the values that drive biotechnology, which they assess from the standpoint of Anabaptist tradition. Further, biotechnologies are not all alike, and some pose more serious ethical challenges than do others. Most of the biotechnologies examined in these pages involve some risks that merit careful and thoughtful attention, caution, and even precaution. Some, but not all, of those risks even represent threats to fundamental moral perspectives and practices. While challenging biotechnologies in various ways, many of the critiques do not entail their total rejection but seek, in some measure, their transformation or at least their restricted use, whether for particular purposes or through particular means. A common theme is that the Anabaptist tradition should show the world a better way by serving as a “contrast community” and embodying “dissenting values.” The task is to witness to Jesus and to be his disciples in a community and its practices as well as in individual lives and actions. Not surprisingly, there is considerable ambivalence in these chapters toward public policy as a context for transforming biotechnologies. While a few authors propose ways to shape public policy in light of such concerns as justice, several chapters stress an evangelical approach of conversion while some extend this to reshaping the broader culture. Nevertheless, the primary emphasis remains on what the Christian community should do. An examination of particular religious traditions reveals variety in judgments about biotechnologies. This volume is no exception. Even though these chapters were generally written from within and at least about the Anabaptist tradition, they often come to quite different conclusions. One participant remarked that the conference itself displayed as much variety as a secular conference that does not claim to represent a “common community.” Several areas of debate mark this volume, just as they mark moral discourse in the society at large, for instance, the moral status of the developing embryo. Sounding a theme that reverberates through several chapters, Joseph Kotva stresses that the church is the primary locus for equipping us “with the character, convictions, and relationships that enable us to both navigate through and witness to the world—including the world of biotechnology” (261). Through its various beliefs and practices, the church is—in principle if not always in fact—a community of “discernment,” characterized also by other worship-generated and sustained virtues, such as reverence and humility. Even if the conference did not fully become a discerning community—in part because it was a conference that included worship rather than being a worshiping community—it did achieve genuine dialogue and enhanced understanding, perhaps especially of the kinds of questions that need to be addressed within the Anabaptist tradition as its participants seek to analyze and evaluate modern biotechnologies and determine appropriate responses to them. In addition, the conference produced this volume, which itself makes a significant contribution to the larger societal debate about biotechnologies, in part by so clearly displaying “contrast” and “dissenting” values embodied in a particular tradition. When I write in
bioethics or participate in bioethical debates about
culture or policy, I tend to use secular, philosophical
categories. Nevertheless, from my Quaker background and
convictions, I am very attuned to and sympathetic with
many of the themes that mark the Anabaptist tradition. I
also learned much from this book, and I look forward to
using it in the classroom when I seek to elucidate the
views of a range of religious traditions toward
biotechnologies. Now we finally have a rich resource for
examining the implications of the Anabaptist tradition
for bioethics, a resource that can be used alongside
works from other religious traditions. Viewing New Creations orders:
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