  From the beginning of the Abrahamic faiths and of Greek philosophy, religion and morality have been closely intertwined. This is true whether we go back within Greek philosophy or within Christianity and Judaism and Islam. The present entry will not try to step beyond these confines, since there are other entries on Eastern thought (see, for  example, the entries on  Ethics in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism and  Chinese Ethics).  The entry proceeds chronologically, giving greatest length to the contemporary period.  It cannot, within the present compass, aspire to be comprehensive.  But it will be able to describe the main options as they have occurred historically.  The purpose of proceeding historically is to substantiate the claim that morality and religion have been inseparable until very recently, and that our moral vocabulary is still deeply infused with this history. Since there are historically so many different ways to see the relation, a purely schematic or typological account is not likely to succeed as well. The entry will not try to enter deeply into the ethical theories of the individual philosophers mentioned, since this encyclopedia already contains individual entries about them; it will focus on what they say about the relation between morality and religion. 