Timothy M. Renick Associate Professor 1119 34 Peachtree St P.O. Box 4089 Atlanta, GA 30302-4089 phone: 404-413-6115 fax: 404-413-6124 e-mail: trenick@gsu.edu

• B.A. Dartmouth College Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, Religion and Government
• M.A. and Ph.D. Princeton University, Department of Religion
• Recipient, 2002 Board of Regents Teaching Excellence Award
• Recipient of the 2004 Excellence in Teaching Award from the American Academy of Religion

• Introduction to Religion,
• History of Christian Thought
• Contemporary Religious Thought
• Philosophy of Religion
• Augustine and Aquinas
• Religion and Ethics
• War, Peace, and Religion
• Church and State
• Graduate Seminar in Religious Studies
• Perspectives of the Comparative Study of Religion

Areas of Interest:
I study comparative religious ethics and the history of Christianity. My specific interests include the just-war tradition and issues of religious violence, moral dialogue between religious communities, church and state, cloning, and the life and work of Thomas Aquinas.

Whether or not one is personally religious, I believe that one cannot be an informed individual -- one cannot understand the world around us -- without understanding religion

My book, Aquinas for Armchair Theologians (published by Westminster/John Knox Press in 2002), focuses on the philosophical thought of Aquinas and the ways in which his views shape contemporary thinking on a range of issues, including politics, warfare, and sexuality. I have written a series of articles on issues involving the Christian "just war" tradition, including articles that have appeared in The Thomist and The Journal of Religious Studies. I currently am working on an essay exploring historical renderings of the notion of "just cause" in just-war theory and how they relate to the issue of preemptive acts if violence: Can one morally have cause to go to war before one has been attacked? I am fascinated by the way religion in general shapes the moral attitudes and actions of both individuals and of societies. My recent article on cloning (The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics), for instance, attempts to determine not whether cloning is moral or immoral (though I grant that this is a fascinating question); rather, it attempts to establish the reasons why many individuals have such a strong negative reaction against cloning. What makes an action morally "abominable"? Is it something we are taught by parents, God, or nature, or is the answer more complex than any of these alternatives would suggest?

Selected publications:

Aquinas for Armchair Theologians, Westminster/John Knox Press, 2002.

"A Second Chance for Aquinas," The Christian Century, 122,17, August 23, 2005, 22-26.

"Crusader Zeal: Holy Wars, Then and Now, "Christian Century, 122,2, January 25, 2005, 26-30.

"Religion and War," Encyclopedia of World History,edited by William H. McNeill, Berkshire Publishing Group, 2005, 1568-1573.

"Crusades," in The Encyclopedia of Religion and War, edited by Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez, Routledge, 2004, 95-101.

"Aquinas," in The World's Great Philosophers, edited by Robert Arrington, Blackwell Publishing, 2003, 1-8.

"A Cabbit in Sheep's Clothing: Exploring the Sources of Our Moral Disquiet About Cloning," The Annual of The Society of Christian Ethics, Volume 18, 1998, 259-274.

"Charity Lost: The Secularization of the Principle of Double Effect in the Just-War Tradition," The Thomist, Vol. 58, no. 3, July 1994, 441-462.