Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook: Ten Lectures on Social Subjects

A series of ten lectures examines social and political problems from a moral standpoint, urging deep personal and institutional change rather than mere legislative tinkering. The author criticizes militarism, state authority, and systemic injustices such as poverty, exploitative labour, punitive prisons, and sexual exploitation, arguing that legality can entrench vice when divorced from conscience. He challenges complacent religious and political leadership, calls for honest self-accusation, and advocates a politics grounded in compassion and the will to love rather than in power, insisting that meaningful reform requires changes of heart at both individual and collective levels.