Moral Traditions: An Introduction to World Religious Ethics, and: Understanding Religious Ethics, and: Moral Struggle and Religious Ethics: On the Person as Classic in Comparative Theological Contexts (review)

These three texts each make significant contributions to comparative religious ethics, a relatively recent discipline that reflects the rise of religious pluralism and globalization. Taken together, these books raise questions about what comparative religious ethics is, how it should be done, and why it should be done. What makes comparative religious ethics “comparative” and to what extent can comparative religious ethics be made genuinely “theological”?

Mari Rapela Heidt, who holds a PhD in theological ethics from Marquette University and currently lectures in the religious studies department at the University of Dayton, has written a well-organized and highly accessible introduction to the ethics of the world religions for beginning undergraduate students. Each of the main chapters in her book surveys a major world religion (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Chinese moral tradition) through four lenses: a brief review of the tradition; the moral world of the religion; values, principles, or virtues in the tradition; and the religious tradition on a particular moral issue (e.g., Hinduism on abortion, Buddhism on wealth and poverty, Judaism on the environment, Christianity on war and peace, Islam on men and women, and China’s one-child policy). The book also includes opening chapters that introduce students to the study of ethics and religious ethics; a final chapter on additional religious moral traditions (Sikhism, Jainism, Bahá’í, and Shinto); sidebars highlighting major religious figures, texts, or events (e.g., Gandhi, Thich Nhat Hanh, Elie Wiesel, the Charter of Medina, and the Cultural Revolution); and discussion questions, bibliography (including visual media), footnotes, a glossary, and an index.

Although this book briefly discusses the discipline of comparative religious ethics and some of its descriptive and conceptual methods in its opening chapters, its broad scope and concise treatment mean that the actual task of comparing the similarities and differences in the ethics of the world religions is kept to a minimum. The few detailed comparisons that are made focus largely on Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian understandings of the concepts of reincarnation (29, 34, 64), dharma (18–19, 23–24, 34–35, 64), karma (18–19, 21–23, 35–36, 64), and ahimsa (25–27, 38, 70–71). While the main chapters are organized in a way that facilitates comparison, and discussion questions are included that invite students to observe similarities and differences, the book would be strengthened by giving greater attention to comparison throughout and adding a concluding chapter that summarizes its comparative content. It ends somewhat abruptly with a discussion of the Shinto moral tradition.

Charles Mathewes, associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, has written a book that, while limited to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, achieves much greater comparative sophistication. The text is based on a course he has taught for more than ten years called “Religious Ethics and Moral Problems,” and it bears the marks of a seasoned teacher whose primary audience is advanced undergraduate students, both religious and secular. Mathewes writes from a Protestant Christian perspective “having a strong apocalyptic dimension which is focused on the next life,” acknowledging that Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox may find his views “odd or confused” (53). Part 1 discusses the relationship between God and morality and provides an overview of the ethics of each of the three Abrahamic religions. Parts 2 and 3 then examine not only the moral positions but “the arguments animating the traditions” (3) on a wide range of personal and social matters (e.g., friendship, sexuality, marriage and family, lying, forgiveness, capital punishment, war, and the environment). Part 4 turns to the even more ordinary topics of labor, leisure, and life and the more...