This preprint investigates the ethical, social, and theological dimensions of love in plural societies, with particular attention to the cultural phenomenon of Valentine’s Day. While widely celebrated, Valentine’s Day is often sentimentalized and commodified, reducing love to private emotion or consumption. This study employs biblical exegesis (Song of Songs, 1 John 4, John 3, Psalm 133) alongside peace ethics, structural justice theory, and Global South scholarship to conceptualize love as relational, ethically demanding, and publicly oriented. The article demonstrates that biblical love functions as a moral infrastructure capable of guiding peacebuilding, interreligious coexistence, and resistance to structural injustice. It critiques modern cultural representations of love as morally insufficient and proposes reframing Valentine’s Day as a site of public moral pedagogy, leveraging its global visibility to foster ethical reflection and socially transformative action. By integrating theological insight, ethical theory, and Global South perspectives, the study contributes an interdisciplinary framework for understanding love as a sustained moral vocation, providing normative guidance for scholars, religious communities, educators, and policymakers in ethically navigating pluralistic and structurally unequal contexts. Keywords: Biblical love; public theology; Valentine’s Day; peacebuilding; structural justice; moral pedagogy; religious pluralism; Global South
ABEL ADEOLA ALAO (Sat,) studied this question.