Religion, theology, church, and bioethics

Modern medical ethics developed in America after mid-century chiefly at theological schools, but discourse on bioethics soon moved to the pluralist-secular settings of the academy and the clinic, where it acquired a philosophical and intentionally non-religious cast. An effort was made, on the grounds of 'liberal culture' and 'late Enlightenment rationality' to find a framework for inquiry which aspired to the universal. Today, while that language persists, it coexists with, challenges, and is challenged by forms of ethical analysis and advocacy which take into consideration the 'thickness' of complicating narrative and reasoning based in the many religious traditions. It has become incumbent upon advocates of those traditions to propose 'publicly accessible' argument.