Introduction: Ethnography, Moral Theory, and Comparative Religious Ethics

This essay addresses the questions, “what good is religious ethics for?” and “what justification exists for the field?” in three steps. First, it canvases how religious ethicists have offered reasons for carrying out work in the field to identify an Anti‐Reductive Paradigm that is guided by an Egalitarian Imperative. That imperative functions as a thin, minimal morality of inclusivity and equal respect that guides work in the field. Second, the essay considers the field's ends. Here the focus shifts from values that shape the field's methods to values that can describe the field's purposes. That shift requires us to think in terms of a thick rather than a thin morality, one with substantive rather than procedural virtues in mind. The essay offers a constructive, substantive proposal under the rubric of Critical Humanism. Critical Humanism justifies the study of religious ethics as an enterprise that can expand the moral imagination through its encounter with difference. It is shaped by four values: post‐critical reasoning, social criticism, cross‐cultural fluency, and environmental responsibility. Third, the essay brings the two parts of the argument together by explaining how to connect such purposes to the thin morality of inclusivity and equal respect. One upshot of the essay is to have us think not only about values, but also about power as it pertains to scholarship in the guild; hence the attention to the ethics and politics of religious ethics.

Section: The Anti‐reductive Paradigmmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ethics and Politics of Religious Ethics, 1973–2023

Miller¹

2023

“…Similarly, comparative religious ethics has seen a shift from a focus on moral theory toward ethnographies of moral worlds, an approach which has been characterized as the "third wave" of comparative religious ethics (Bucar andStalnaker 2012, 2014;Kelsay 2010;Lewis 2010;and Ranganathan and Clairmont 2017). As religious ethicists increased engagement with methods and insights from other disciplines, including history and the social sciences, to analyze the ethical dimensions of everyday life, they opened up a wider space within ethics for the task of description (Smith 2007;Scharen and Vigen 2011;Smith 2013;and Banner 2014).…”

Section: Background: Dialogues On Description and Judgmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Patrick McKearney's 2016 book discussion (McKearney 2016) engaged key figures in the anthropology of ethics (Banner 2014;Fassin 2012;Laidlaw 2013). A 2017 focus issue brought together contributors around themes of "Ethnography, Moral Theory, and Comparative Religious Ethics" (Ranganathan and Clairmont 2017). These signposts point to the broader conversation between anthropology and ethics that has developed over the last decade in this journal and elsewhere.…”

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confidence: 99%

ETHICAL SELF‐MAKING, MORAL EXPERIMENTATION, AND HUMANITARIAN ENCOUNTER: Interdisciplinary Engagement with the Anthropology of Ethics

Campbell¹

2020

The interdisciplinary group of authors featured in this focus issue contribute to conversations at the intersection of anthropology and ethics by exploring ethical self‐making and moral experimentation among faith‐based actors in a range of humanitarian settings. Kari Henquinet describes the genealogies of American evangelical humanitarianism by focusing on the ethical self‐formation of early World Vision leaders. Rachel Schneider and Sara Williams each explore practices by which relatively privileged individuals seek to cultivate virtue by engaging with those on the margins, in poor, urban neighborhoods in South Africa, and through packaged tours in Israel/Palestine, respectively. Sarah Tobin describes projects of Islamic self‐making among displaced refugee women in Jordan. Although they examine a wide range of subjects and settings, they explore a common set of themes, two of which I discuss here: moral experimentation, and engagements with suffering, poverty, and inequality.

“…I offer a definition of transdisciplinarity and explore the implications of this framework in paragraphs that follow.5 As with the term "American religious history," I use "religious ethics" to designate the scope of a discipline, following language adopted by academic religious studies departments (such as the University of Virginia, Yale, and the University of Chicago) and by academic journals, particularly the Journal of Religious Ethics.6 This dynamic is particularly pronounced in much ethical scholarship from the last two decades that engages ethnographic methodologies. See, for example, McKearney 2016;Ranganathan and Clairmont 2017;and Campbell 2020. This ethnographic turn will be discussed in greater detail in the section examining Hammer 2019.…”

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confidence: 99%

On Transdisciplinary Possibility: An Interstitial Exploration of American Religious History and Religious Ethics

Simpson¹

2023

This essay explores the intersections of religious ethics and American religious history and advocates for a transdisciplinary approach to scholarship in both disciplines. Four books, each published within the last 4 years, form the foundation of this discussion by modeling distinctive elements of transdisciplinary scholarship: Heathen: Religion and Race in American History by Kathryn Gin Lum; Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism by Peter Coviello; Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts Against Domestic Violence by Juliane Hammer; and The Sex Obsession: Perversity and Possibility in American Politics by Janet R. Jakobsen. Each of these texts raises questions that hover at the intersections of religious ethics and American religious history, demonstrating how scholarship in both areas can be strengthened through a destabilization of the disciplines themselves.