In this edited anthology, Iozzio and Jung set out to accomplish something rather difficult. Having mined past issues of the Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics (ASCE) and its current iteration as the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics (JSCE) for articles on sex, gender, and sexuality stretching over a twenty-five-year period, they present a carefully chosen collection of nine articles from among the ninety available. Because the publications included in this anthology have already undergone a rigorous process of peer review, it would be redundant for me to evaluate the substance of the authors’ arguments. Instead, I will limit my evaluation to the editors’ explanation of the purpose and content of the volume and applicability for the classroom.

It is notable that the editors made the deliberate choice that this volume would include published articles only from the ASCE and JSCE. As a result, this anthology functions as a history of the development of thought on sexual ethics in the SCE's own membership, a history that the editors helpfully narrate with attentiveness to context (1–6). Given the space constraints of an anthology and the fact that it is difficult to determine which authors and publications can adequately represent a history of the development of thought, the editors were forced to make difficult and inherently political choices in their work of discernment.

Working within these conditions, the editors have clearly attempted to represent members of underrepresented groups and include multiple Christian traditions of thought, but they have also tried to balance these concerns with the desirability of covering a range of urgent issues of injustice. The chosen articles address the oppression of LGBTQ people in church and society (Jean Porter, David Gushee), gendered sexual violence (Karen Lebacqz, Traci West), HIV/AIDS prevention (Katherine Attanasi), toxic masculinity (Hoon Choi), teenage sexting (Karen Peterson-Iyer), sex work (Letitia Campbell and Yvonne Zimmerman), and navigating moral disagreement in community (Sarah Moses). In general, these publications reflect the growing consensus that Christian ethicists, if they are to do sexual ethics well, must reckon with the social construction of sex, gender, and sexuality and must employ critical methodologies (liberationist, womanist, feminist) in their analysis of social power and systemic injustices.

It is possible to quibble about the fact that these editorial choices inevitably excluded some ethicists whose publications in ASCE or JSCE one might have expected to appear in this anthology (Cristina Traina and Miguel De La Torre, for example), a shortcoming that the editors acknowledge (16). On the whole, however, the editorial choices Iozzio and Jung have made are justified in view of the limitations and compromises inherent in the task they set out to accomplish.

Finally, this anthology is surely appropriate for introductory courses focused on the ethics of sexuality and gender. (I recently assigned five of the nine featured articles in my own course.) The editors have supplemented each of the articles with “questions for reflection” and “suggestions for further reading” to help orient classroom discussion. The questions are particularly helpful due to the fact that they engage deeply with the substance of the authors’ arguments and invite the student into critical reflection. The bibliographical suggestions are effective as a way to alert students to the broader conversations about these issues in the discipline of theological ethics. Moreover, these supplementary features increase the appeal of the volume because the articles themselves are already available to students and instructors who have an institutional subscription to internet-based article databases. The only shortcoming of this anthology regarding classroom application is the fact that it does not directly address certain issues of sexual and gender justice that students will want to discuss, such as protecting the rights of transgender persons in particular (as compared with the rights of LGBTQ persons in general).

This is a fine anthology that features some of the most ethically serious and challenging writing on sexuality and gender drawn from one of the finest journals in the field. I highly recommend it, particularly for classroom use.