Unusually for a work in ethics, this book has been preoccupied with data and with competing sociological theories. What I have attempted to show is that once moral communities take centre stage in ethics – as they do in virtue ethics – then there should be a greater interest in such data and theories. Virtue ethics makes assumptions about moral socialisation which do need to be tested empirically. Depictions of idealised communities are simply inadequate for this task.

Of course actual, as distinct from idealised, communities are likely to be ambiguous and messy moral carriers. People argue and fight, they disagree and conflict, and even in the most conformist communities there are always idiosyncratic nonconformists. Church communities are no exceptions. Nevertheless, what has been discovered in the course of this book is that there is a great deal of evidence showing that churchgoers are relatively, yet significantly, different from nonchurchgoers. On average they have higher levels of Christian belief (which is hardly surprising), but, in addition, they usually have a stronger sense of moral and civic order and tend to be significantly more altruistic than nonchurchgoers. I have argued that churchgoing is a distinctive culture and, as such, it is directly relevant to virtue ethics. Within this culture individuals are nourished in distinctively Christian values and virtues.

Now, of course, there is much research still to be done. If I have the energy there is a major work to be written about The Future of Churchgoing. Accurate information about churchgoing is gradually becoming available in many different countries.