Where Theology Meets Justice: Rethinking accountability across disciplines

Dr Meredith Edelman, 2026

Purpose

With degrees in religion, law and regulatory studies, Dr Meredith Edelman is committed to genuinely interdisciplinary scholarship. Her 2025 book, Catholic Diocese, Legal Systems, and Corporate Accountability (Hart), engages with scholarship from a wide range of disciplines, including social theory, criminology, history, religious studies and law. While law may be a single discipline, the book discusses several very different legal systems: Catholic canon law; Australian and US corporate law; tort and criminal law in Victoria (Australia), Arizona (US), New Mexico (US) and the Navajo Nation; US corporate bankruptcy law; and an Australian Royal Commission. Interdisciplinarity, to Meredith, requires reading and discussing issues across and within disciplines, bringing together thinking from multiple perspectives.

Practice and output

Edelman's commitment to interdisciplinarity aligns closely with her expertise in restorative justice and its theoretical foundations. A recent article she published with Emeritus Professor Rick Sarre of Adelaide University in the International Journal of Restorative Justice demonstrates both, bringing scholars of restorative justice into conversation with contemporary theologians writing within faith traditions long associated with restorative justice. Restorative justice is an approach to resolving harms that has, in recent decades, drawn a great deal of attention for its potential to combine real accountability for serious wrongdoing while simultaneously centring victims and their perspective.

After identifying a set of ‘peace churches’ including Mennonites, Quakers and denominations within Black American faith traditions, the paper reviews the historical links between these churches and the modern movement for restorative justice. Among other links, Howard Zehr, the ‘grandfather’ of restorative justice, was motivated by his Mennonite faith, publishing his most well-read book through a press focused on Mennonite and Amish audiences – histories of the modern movement for restorative justice frequently note these links, and members of these faith traditions remain well-represented among restorative justice practitioners. Despite these links, discourse on restorative theory only rarely engages with peace church theology. Responding to John Milbank's call in Theology & Social Theory (2006) for social theorists to attend to theology for the benefit of both disciplines, Edelman and Sarre show how peace church theologians are engaging with criminological concepts, including restorative justice, but notably also abolition – as theology's ontological claims provide it with a focal point for Sittlichkeit, the Hegelian concept of ‘ethical order,’ which Milbank argued gives social theorists valuable methodological ground. Edelman and Sarre highlight theological contributions such as Mennonite theologian James Logan's Good Punishment? Christian Moral Practice and U.S. Imprisonment (2008), which draws on Angela Davis and other criminologists as well as theologian Stanley Hauerwas to argue that the principles and values underlying restorative justice also support abolition, inviting secular scholars to reflect on the relationship between pacifist theologies, restorative theories, and peace church communities.

Outcome and impact

Interdisciplinarity is integral to business education, and yet by its nature is difficult to measure or quantify. Now and into the future, business leaders need to be able to understand complex problems from multiple perspectives. Edelman's approach to interdisciplinarity reflects Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME)'s highest aspirations: she is engaged across multiple diverse literatures, approaches problems with a critical mind, and is committed to peace, justice and strong institutions.