In this chapter, PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones argues that social science, particularly ethnography, can play a useful role in helping religious people navigate complex moral issues. Using H. Richard Niebuhr’s observation that the church is “limited” by “being in history, faith, and sin,” Jones argues that using narratives drawn from ethnographic research is a way to broaden churches’ moral understandings that move beyond their own necessarily limited and particularistic viewpoint. He employs the case of the debate of Physician Assisted Suicide in Oregon to illustrate this point; denominations divided on this issue along class lines rather than over clear theological distinctions.

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