Bursting Wineskins: Debating Sexual and Household Ethics Today

Responding to this special ATR issue on household and relationship diversity, this essay reflects on human beings as creatures who inherit and transform, and who cannot flourish apart from, social roles and institutions and the obligations that attend these. It raises questions both for those who seek to take covenantal fidelity as a normative grammar for Christian ethical reflection on intimacy, commitment, and responsibility, and for those who look rather to the nature of the Divine as a non-exclusive network of infinite love. Calling for gentle and curious listening to those experimenting with diverse forms of intimate relationship, it seeks after forms of life capable of supporting the flourishing of the full diversity of human persons.