On August 29, 2025, Dr. Derrick Lemons presented developing research from the Center for Theologically Engaged Anthropology (CTEA) at the 23rd quinquennial World Congress of IAHR. The conference was held in Krakow, Poland, and hosted scholars of religion from all over the world. Lemons led a panel entitled "Between Relativism and Reproach: Making Value Judgments about Human Flourishing" that considered the ways that TEA can be used to assess the ethical frameworks of our interlocutors. This panel addressed a critical question: how can anthropologists navigate between the extremes of relativism and judgmentalism to support human flourishing? This is a key focus of the third phase of the CTEA's research initiative funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Recent critiques of relativism have established a new orthodoxy in anthropology, shifting the focus from exoticized accounts of cultural differences to universalized narratives of human suffering (Robbins 2013). This shift, motivated by a desire to identify and challenge global systems of oppression, has led to calls for anthropologists to prioritize ethical considerations (Scheper-Hughes 1995; Teitelbaum 2019). This movement, known as the "judgmental turn" (Robbins 2024), readily condemns practices like Melanesian initiation rituals as child abuse or Zande witchcraft accusations as patriarchal violence. However, many anthropologists within this "judgmental turn" lack clear criteria for their moral and ethical judgments, weakening their conclusions and leaving them on seemingly arbitrary foundations.

Panelists examined what it means to embrace descriptive cultural relativism while questioning how prescriptive cultural relativism is applied in anthropology. They also aimed to sensitively address the researcher’s own moral positioning within their academic, personal, and cultural traditions—their "worlds of vision" (Viveiros de Castro 2016)—to better understand the interwoven and distinct moral worlds of researchers, their interlocutors, and the academy.

Dr. Lemons was joined on this panel by the following academics: 

·    Susie Triffitt, a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, who studies historical immigration trends in Bradford, England and how they have bred thriving religious and ethnic diversities, which are both connected and disconnected from national and global religious trends in transformative ways, creating a multi-faith non-secular city. 

·    Alice Viola Clark, a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, who explores the challenges of analyzing the Reform Jewish community in both its own rite, as a unique religious phenomenon, while also assessing its standing as a categorically Jewish sect, especially as it relates to the classical mores of identity, behavior, and community that persist within more ‘traditional’ streams of Judaism. 

·   Loic Bawidamann, a PhD Candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Zurich, who provided a response to the other panelists.