Response to Bucar and Stalnaker

This comment provides a brief response to criticisms of Kelsay (2012) set forth in a recent essay by Elizabeth Bucar and Aaron Stalnaker.     

On Comparative Religious Ethics as a Field of Study

This essay is a critical engagement with recent assessments of comparative religious ethics by John Kelsay and Jung Lee. Contra Kelsay's proposal to return to a neo‐Weberian sociology of religious norm elaboration and justification, the authors argue that comparative religious ethics is and should be practiced as a field of study in active conversation with other fields that consider human flourishing, employing a variety of methods that have their roots in multiple disciplines. Cross‐pollination from a variety of disciplines is a strength of comparative ethics, which has enlivened recent and ongoing research on ethics, not a problem to be resolved by convergence on a single, distinctively comparative project. The authors also argue in response to Lee and Kelsay that while individual comparative studies of virtue and personal formation can be flawed in various ways, this line of research has been productive and at times very compelling. Moreover, attention to comparative virtue ethics shows how scholarship on some ethical topics necessitates drawing on a variety of perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds, a conclusion relevant to all work in religious ethics today.     

SPECTERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: Charles Taylor and the Problem of Historicism

This paper identifies and analyzes the problem of historicism in Charles Taylor's work overall, but with particular emphasis on his most recent publication, A Secular Age. I circumscribe the problem of historicism through reference to the nineteenth‐century German philosophical tradition in which it developed, in particular in the thought of Wilhelm Dilthey. I then trace the structural similarities between the notions of history to be found in the thought of Taylor and Dilthey and how these structural similarities raise worries associated with the problem of historicism. I argue that the structural aporia of historicism evident in Taylor's work brings to light a live philosophical problem that is basic to theoretical debates in the study religion.     

The role of occupational standards in workplace religious literacy

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the UK National Occupational Standards to identify the breadth of occupations for which it has been determined that workers need some degree of religious literacy. A total of 465 standards documents which mention religion and beliefs relating to a diverse range of occupations were retrieved, of which 13 had a primary focus on religion and beliefs. Approximately 60 percent of these standards noted the need for knowledge about religion and beliefs, though only a quarter of these specified actual performance criteria. With some exceptions, most of the standards were vague as to what is meant by religion and its proxies, with very few attempts to define their terms. A lack of specificity renders the inclusion of references to religion largely tokenistic rather than reflecting a measure of religious literacy which could be practically operationalised.     

Government interference in religious institutions and terrorism

ABSTRACT

Many states have adopted policies that monitor or attempt to control religious institutions in various ways. This ranges from limiting foreign-born clerics to approving the sermons presented in these institutions. These policies are often justified as measures to limit religious strife or terrorism by minimising extremism in the country. Are they effective? Or are they counterproductive, and promote resentment and violence? Using data from the Religion and State dataset and the Global Terrorism Database, I find that intensified government interference in religious institutions can lead to an increase in terrorism in a country.     

Compliance gaps and the failed promises of religious freedoms

ABSTRACT

Previous research has established the striking disconnect between states’ constitutional promises of religious freedoms and their actual practices for supporting such freedoms. Yet, past research has not fully explained, measured, or tested the extent of why the disconnect occurs for protections of religious freedom. Using the Religion and State Collection (Round 3) and other country level data, we construct two measures for the discrepancy between constitutional promises of religious freedom and the level of restrictions placed on religions. Building on previous research and theory, we argue, that these discrepancies represent a compliance gap, and can be explained through social, economic, governance, and global dimensions. We conclude that although promises of religious freedom signal a commitment to protections, upholding these promises is reliant on the religious economy of the nation (e.g. social pressures) and the specific types of governance used (e.g. free elections and an independent judiciary). Despite the influence of global and economic factors in explanations of other compliance gaps, these were insignificant in understanding why religious freedom compliance gaps emerge.     

Recovering the Pastness of the Past: A Response to the Focus on Eighteenth-Century Ethics

In its dominantly ahistorical character, the Journal of Religious Ethics has much in common with its counterparts among philosophical journals, showing as clearly as they do the widespread antihistorical bias oftwentieth-century analytical philosophy. Moreover, such historical work as the journal has published has been tied unnecessarily closely to the voluntarist (divine command) paradigm. While drawing attention to the antivoluntarist strand in the history of ethics, the articles by John Bowlin, Mark Cladis, and Mark Larrimore, together with the introduction by Jennifer Herdt, demonstrate that the purposes of inquiry in religious ethics are better served by attending to the past than by ignoring it.     

Comparative Religious Ethics Among the Ruins

This is a response to the recent essay by Elizabeth M. Bucar and Aaron Stalnaker on “Comparative Religious Ethics as a Field of Study.” I clarify my earlier positions on method and virtue in comparative religious ethics and try to respond to some of the issues that Bucar and Stalnaker raise in regard to my arguments specifically and the field more generally. I argue that while we need not measure the practical impact of scholarly work in comparative religious ethics purely in terms of political or social action, I nevertheless worry that defining the goals of comparative inquiry in terms of the production of bewilderment, intellectual vertigo, or skeptical questions can lead to impressionistic or therapeutic methodological norms. In a similar vein, I refine my earlier position on externalism that acknowledges the impossibility of a purely externalist approach but also notes the desirability of coming to understand others “in their own terms” prior to engaging in the process of transmutation. I also question Bucar and Stalnaker's pessimism about the potential of producing “rigorously convincing ethical theory from the lived experience of regular folk,” suggesting that perhaps we are working with different conceptions of the sociology of knowledge. Finally, I consider whether we are currently in the midst of an epistemological crisis and conclude with some reflections on the rationality of the craft of comparative religious ethics.     

Introduction

The contributors to this reflection on the field consider the legacy of Christian ethics in comparative religious ethics (CRE), particularly in regard to whether the latter has escaped the parochialism and hegemony of the former, whether the legacy is simply vicious or whether it can be virtuous, and the specific ways in which the former has influenced the discipline of CRE in regard to methods and themes. Beyond these methodological questions, the contributors also speak to the historical development of Christian ethics and CRE in the cultural and institutional contexts of late twentieth century America and provide reflections on the politics of CRE as it is now practiced and debated in the field and in the academy.