Back to the Ethic: Reclaiming Western Values - Softcover

Bederman, Diane Weber

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1927618053 ISBN 13: 9781927618059

Publisher: Mantua Books Ltd., 2015

Synopsis

Today, we are up against tribal societies whose ethic is one of honor and shame and where blood revenge is in the veins, where violence begets violence that, over time, can lead to a sense of helplessness, hopelessness, and victim-hood. At the same time, too many of us born into freedom have become apathetic to, even neglectful of, the very ethic that underpins that freedom. It is time to go back to the founding ethic of Western culture, ethical monotheism, and reclaim our western values. Winston Churchill wrote that the ethical system we received from the Jewish people is “incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all other wisdom and learning put together. On that system and by that faith there has been built out of the wreck of the Roman Empire the whole of our existing civilization.” Sadly, we stopped teaching this potent biblical ethic years ago because somewhere along the way to political correctness nirvana, God and religion became four-letter words. We must wake up to the fact that our way of life is under attack: Not only from acts of terrorism leaching into our countries but internal pressures of worshiping the false gods of absolute tolerance, inclusion, and accommodation to the point that we welcome beliefs, customs, and rituals that undermine our democracy—in the name of democracy! If we are going to preserve the freedoms we now take for granted we must return to that teaching, to words that bear great fruit, because the foundation of Western democracy is ethical monotheism, the 3500 year old ethic which began in the desert, was brought into Israel, then expanded outward with the spread of Christianity through the Mediterranean then into Europe where the teachings were translated into English and brought to the new world. Countries that are founded on the Bible became functioning and then flourishing democracies. This book of laws, gave us amongst other values, the fundamentals of our court and justice systems and business law. The Bible entreats us to be our brother’s keeper by moving away from tribal behaviors, to behave like Abraham who questioned God and protested on behalf of others, so that we develop, practice, and internalize compassion and empathy. These values are essential for democracy to function, because a just society must at times implement policies that disregard individual wants and needs. Within the leaves of Back to the Ethic: Reclaiming Western Values you will find compelling reasons; historical, philosophical, scientific, sociological and psychological, to reclaim our founding ethic, to make it your own, protect and defend it, so that you can pass it down to future generations. As Aristotle teaches us, “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”

About this title

About the Author:

Diane Weber Bederman is a multi-faith endorsed, hospital-trained chaplain with a background in science and the humanities. A regular contributor to CanadaFreePress, Times of Israel, and Convivium – a magazine about faith in our community, she has been published in The Chesterton Review and was a blogger at Huffington Post Canada. A mental health advocate, Ms. Weber Bederman writes about mental illness, as well as religion, politics, and ethics on her blog, The Middle Ground: The Agora of the 21st Century. A proud member of Leading Women for Shared Parenting, she lives in Ontario, Canada in a place she calls the Garden of Eden.

Review:

Why do some cultures support freedom and individualism, while others are repressive? Why do some value the inherent dignity of each human being, while others sacrifice millions for dubious ends? Back to the Ethic: Reclaiming Western Values is Diane Weber Bederman’s cri de coeur, her passionate call to renew the JudeoChristian heritage of the west before it is swamped by utilitarianism, secularism, and moral relativism. It is also a wideranging personal reflection and marshalling of specific references that link the stories and injunctions of the Bible to the deepest values of ethical monotheism. Most of all, the book is an invitation to readers to return to the Bible to ground a principled and compassionate ethical system, one that neither petrifies into a rigid fundamentalism at war with science or intellect, nor opens itself to dissolution through excessive tolerance or reliance on feelings. Both religious believers and non-believers will find much to engage and provoke in these pages, which distill a lifetime’s worth of thought and insight.

Janice Fiamengo, Professor of English University of Ottawa

Democracy at Risk - New Book Sounds the Alarm and the Remedy

Today, our way of life is threatened as never before. Canadians tend to take freedom, human rights and democracy for granted, never having known the opposite. The world appears to be descending into chaos - conflicts and war victimizing hundreds of thousands of people; a fast-- growing, aggressive totalitarian ideology, sending its tentacles ever wider.

Unless we reclaim our Judeo-Christian heritage - the foundation of our way of life - we risk losing it altogether, writes Diane Weber Bederman in her debut book, Back to the Ethic: Reclaiming Western Values. Deeply felt and deeply thought out; bold, clear and forthright, the book is her impassioned plea to re connect to the ethical monotheism in Judaism and Christianity that brought us Western democracy, before it's too late. "The Bible is the blueprint for democracy", she writes.

From the book: "Sadly, we are losing our connection to the Bible's ethical rules, and are thereby putting our Western democracies on life support. Not only are we under attack from those who hate our way of life, our Western culture is crumbling from internal pressures: from idolizing tolerance, inclusion and accommodation to the point that we welcome beliefs, customs and rituals that undermine our democracy - in the name of democracy."

Through personal anecdotes, interwoven with history, politics, philosophy, science and theology, she quotes Winston Churchhill: "The Judeo Christian ethic colours every aspect of Western culture, including the basic principles of our social, political and judicial systems. It is the foundation of our lifestyle."

Throughout the book, there are a wealth of quotations gleaned from the greatest minds across the ages From the prophets to the Prince of Wales, I found myself re-reading the book again and again, scouring the book for these gems.

Weber Bederman writes. "I want you to come away from reading my book with a new appreciation of the Bible...(as) the path to personal liberation and a nourished soul as well as the infrastructure upon which to build an ethical, compassionate, free and hopeful society."

by Doris Strub Epstein

CIJ News

January 22, 2016

About this edition

• Publisher: Mantua Books Ltd.
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1927618053
• ISBN 13: 9781927618059
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 206