A warranted performance?

Abstract

Based on material consisting of interviews, we ask how this material sheds light on religion's performance regarding moral competence. Four questions structure the study: Firstly, how do informants articulate moral insights and reasons for actions, practices or personal ideals in religious terms? Secondly, how do they articulate and express religious beliefs in moral terms? Thirdly we discuss theoretically how these ways of articulating moral insights in religious terms, and vice versa, can be linked to the notion of moral competence, and as a possible indication of “religion's performance outside itself”. Finally, we ask how the connection between religion and moral competence identified through the discussion in the third point can be further interpreted in light of the informants’ perceptions of religious contexts and communities where they locate themselves and with which they identify. This provides a more nuanced understanding of how contextual embeddedness conditions moral competence, and the potential performance of religion in that respect.