Representing a spectrum of intellectual concerns and methodological commitments in religious ethics, the contributors to this focus issue consider and assess the advantages and disadvantages of the shift in recent comparative religious ethics away from a rootedness in moral theory toward a model that privileges the ethnography of moral worlds. In their own way, all of the contributors think through and emphasize the meaning, importance, and place of normativity in recent comparative religious ethics.

A survey of developments over the last forty years suggests that little progress has been made in the development of comparative religious ethics as a discipline. While authors working in this field have produced a number of interesting works, the field lacks structure, including an agreement on the basic purpose, terms, and approaches by which contributions may be evaluated as better or worse. I provide an account of this history, suggesting that a way forward will involve marrying ethicists' interest in (...) arguments with close attention to the more and less formal structures by which groups of people organize the giving and taking of reasons. (shrink)

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. (shrink)