Strange Virtues: Ethics in a Multicultural World

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Summary: Gives insight into evry day life in Africa
Review: I read this book as an assignment for a bioethics class. It is written in an easy to read style. It made me thankfull of our American way of life but also gave me some understanding into other cultrues and their way of thinking about religion and society

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Summary: Deals with issues many Christians are afraid to touch
Review: This book focuses on how Christians (and especially evangelicals) are to deal with the fact that many other cultures have moral standards that differ radically from those we take for granted here in the West (bribery for example). This book is written by one who has spent much of his life living and working in non-western cultures, and is targeted primarily for a mission minded audience who will likely be facing some of the issues covered in his book. Despite his evangelical beliefs Adeney is not afraid to question the assumed absoluteness of certain ethical principles that most Christians in the West would affirm. He asks whether our perceptions may be skewed by our culture, and whether certain moral issues may ultimately be relative to the cultural context in which they arise. I appreciated the level of balance Adeney brought to this discussion. He avoided embracing a wishy washy relativism and tolerance based on a disbelief in any solid truths, and yet he also recognized the complexity of experience and the limited abilities of human cognition and judgement. In short, he strives to maintain the delicate balance of intellectual integrity by avoiding the opposite pitfalls of uncritical relativism on one side and unthinking, unreflective dogmatism on the other. Because of this his own position sometimes comes across as unclear or weak, but it is always genuine and honest.

One chapter I especially appreciated was his discussion of the challege of other religions to the Christian. He recognizes that other religions can often seem to surpass Christianity in aesthetic beauty, spiritual meaningfulness, and ethical excellence. However, he also balances this with the admission that religions are often the source of demonic and/or social oppression. Adeney, then weighs the philosophical options of inclusivism, exclusivism, and pluralism in relation to religions. Adeney's own position is fuzzy but at least he is one of the few authors to admit the validity and difficulties in each option.