This collection of thirteen specially commissioned essays expands a new intellectual terrain for sociology; virtue ethics. Using a variety of religious perspectives, of Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, Quakerism, with considerations of Islam and the New Age, this engaged and topical collection deals with properties of virtue in relation to the person, celibacy, hope, and apocalypse, mourning, moral ambiguity. It also treats the concept of virtue in response to MacIntyre, Bauman, Weber, Durkheim and Giddens. It seeks to move sociology past the disabling effects of postmodernity.