Cambridge University Anthropology-Theology Network Tuesday, October 14, 2025 - 8:00am Online Seminar This year, CAT kicks off with a roundtable on how a dialogue between Anthropology and Theology can productively engage with relativism. Recent critiques of relativism have become a new anthropological orthodoxy, shifting from exoticized accounts of indigenous difference to universalized narratives of human suffering (Robbins 2013). This shift, driven by efforts to identify and challenge global systems of oppression, has led to calls for anthropologists to prioritize ethical considerations (Scheper-Hughes 1995; Teitelbaum 2019). However, anthropologists within this ‘judgmental turn’ often lack a clearly stated set of criteria for their moral assessments, dulling the impact of their pronouncements, which are based on seemingly arbitrary foundations. From the other side, Theologians worry that their ideal versions of the good life are often disregarded or misaligned in practice (Jenkins 2018: 102-106, 119-122). Ethnography can help address this issue, while the value-laden nature of Theology could be a fertile resource to a currently morally dis-embedded Anthropology. Working together, anthropologists and theologians can thus generate combined approaches that at once move beyond ungrounded relativism, ill-informed reproach, and unrealistic idealism in seeking to understand varied models of living good humans lives, sometimes leading to conflict. Prof. Derrick Lemons (University of Georgia), Prof. Joseph Webster (University of Cambridge) and Dr. Hannah Howard (University of Georgia) will host this first debate. This will be an ongoing discussion as the Network contributes to the recently begun Templeton project centred on Relativism.