The Shifting Scientific Sands of Morality

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The status of moral norms is complex and there are others in this discussion more qualified than I to comment about their status in the light of present theological discourse. So let me make my comments as a scientifically informed theological amateur.

In my own thinking I have never been able—at least since college— to make sense of what I am told are called deontological ethics, namely the belief that there are moral laws—adultery is wrong—in the same sense that there are scientific laws—magnets have two poles. It has always seemed to me that one can contrive a scenario where lying, adultery, killing etc is the “right” thing to do.

Ethics makes sense to me only in a teleological context where actions and outcomes are juxtaposed and the guiding question is not “Does that action violate some moral rule?” but “Do the ends justify the means”? I would have signed on to help assassinate Hitler and I happily tell white lies all the time. The ends do often justify the means and I think it is incoherent to suggest that the means somehow justify themselves.

If ethics are teleological then right and wrong can change, and change dramatically, but there are constants we can identify within those changes. Take divorce. In an era where a divorced woman may have no way to support herself outside of prostitution, a strong moral prohibition on divorce makes sense. In an era where women have options, getting out of a bad marriage via divorce is now considered acceptable even morally preferable.  In both cases, however, we can discern a common compassion for women—but one that calls for different moral judgments about divorce.

I want to comment on another type of change that overturns traditional moral norms, however, the advance of science. We can see this in highly analogous arguments about both slavery and homosexuality.

Moral justification of slavery, in ancient Greece, the Bible, and the American South was based, in part, on anthropological misunderstandings. This took many forms: Slaves were biologically adapted for that role—“born into” the slave class; black skin was unnatural—the “Mark of Cain” or the “Curse of Ham”; slaves were inferior and incapable of functioning as adults.  All these pseudo-scientific beliefs are false and moral claims based on them have utterly collapsed, except in a few backwaters. But the claims were viable at one time.

Claims that homosexual activity is morally wrong rest on the same kind of pseudo-science. As is the case with slavery, the “Biblical” argument is vague and indirect. Levitical law condemns it, but at the level of tattoos or eating shellfish. New Testament claims rest on—or are at least tightly connected to—the assumption that homosexuality is both “unnatural” and “a choice.” Paul speaks of people “exchanging natural relations for those that are against nature.” This assumption involves anthropological claims about human nature.  Biblical condemnation of homosexuality, by these lights, can be described, with some oversimplification, as the condemnation of “choosing to do unnatural things.”  And, as a broad moral category, I suspect most of us would agree that we should refrain from “choosing to do unnatural things”  (and then argue about the meaning of “unnatural.”)

The degree to which condemnation of homosexuality is based on these two pillars of pseudo-science can be seen in the response to the overturning of those wrong ideas. In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the category “mental disorder.”  This scientifically informed reclassification was met with great hostility from the evangelical community and to this day is still disparaged by Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and other self-appointed moral referees. In the same way the “choice” dimension of homosexuality has given rise to bogus, harmful, and now scientifically discredited “pray away the gay” therapies.

If homosexual activity was simply “wrong” in some deontological sense, there would have been no need to oppose the dismantling of the pseudo-scientific anthropology on which the condemnation was based. It is wrong because it is wrong.

It seems to me that this sort of preliminary reflection on the basis of morality should precede taking stands, and motivate openness to reconsideration of traditional positions.

 

 

On Drawing Lines in the Sand

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We like to draw lines in the sand. It shows that we’re serious. We have expectations. Beside, we argue, didn’t Dean Kelley say that conservative churches grow because they place expectations on their members? Shouldn’t we be avoiding Bonheoffer’s “cheap grace”?

There’s a big problem with sand. It doesn’t stay where you left it.

The wind blows across the dune and leaves no track of your footprints. The waves come into shore and obliterate the nice trench you just dug. Over time, water saturates the sand so that it turns to slush and the sandcastle falls down.

What then do we do with our lines in the sand? One option is to reinforce them. After drawing the line, we can build little Maginot lines to make sure the trench doesn’t collapse. A second option is to build little zones of protection around the line. We won’t actually deal with the moral challenge of the line, but will substitute other moral positions. A third option is to adopt the lines of those around us. Another option is to stop drawing lines altogether. Since they can’t be maintained, why even bother?

Exploring the questions of morality within evangelical culture is difficult because there are a host of prior questions that are unexplored. In the early 1980s, I presented data on Christian college students’ behaviors in areas like alcohol, drugs, and premarital sex (and other stuff as well). The first question was “Why are these the important measures? What about poverty, race, the arms race?” I really didn’t have a good answer beyond “That’s not what the sponsors asked about”. What I should have said was, “Much of evangelical discussion on morality is individual and pietistic. We may not like it, but there it is.”

It’s hard to draw lines in the sand in meaningful ways. In its early days, my denomination couched its moral stands (alcohol, circuses, and the like) as “Guides and Helps for Holy Living.” Twenty years later, the same section of the denominational standards was called “General and Special Rules”, the violation of which constituted “peril to your soul and the witness of the church.”

Here is a sociological question I’ve pondered throughout my career: How does a voluntary association like a religious organization pursue conformity to moral expectations?

If the organization is voluntary, then one has little risk of being forced out. Not so the situation of a state church with a monopoly on access to the means of grace, where failure to adhere meant denial of religious participation.

If one is ruled “out of compliance” in a local congregation, what is the penalty? Leaving this congregation for another than doesn’t hold out the same requirements? Giving up on religious practice in favor of a privatized spirituality?

It is with these lenses that I come to the question of evangelical morality. I suggest that there are some modern moral questions around which the evangelical church has built Maginot lines: abortion, homosexuality, creation (becomes a moral issue because “evolutionists” are seen as denying all morality). We are unable to examine these questions because we have built an infrastructure around the line in the sand. We can’t even get close to the real line.

There are other modern questions of morality that take the second form I suggested: creating demilitarized zones around the line, so we never run the risk of crossing over. Here I’m thinking of attitudes toward premarital sex. We’ve created entire subcultures about purity pledges and modesty norms to keep us far away from the real question. There are some remarkable things being written by young evangelicals right now about the damage created by these demilitarized zones. Purity pledges and modesty norms put great pressure on young women to keep their menfolk away from the line in the sand.

The third image I had of the sand involved outside forces (like the surf) crashing over the line. This relates to the primacy of individual morality over social morality. We can’t talk about broad issues like inequality, racism, the environment, immigration, the common good – moral questions all. The broader cultural and political dynamics have overrun our biblical and spiritual sensibilities. This is how “social justice” gets a bad name in political discourse.

Finally, the line just gets absorbed into the surrounding sand. For too long, evangelical morality had an identity component: “we’re not like them”. So dancing was out, as was social drinking, divorce, premarital sex, pornography, and so on. But the supposed separatism quickly gave way to an understanding of diverse social patterns. We met people who drank socially. We found that those folks in second marriages were pretty cool. The identity separation was overrun. That’s why Ron Sider can write such a scathing book in The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, documenting that the gaps between evangelical Christian behavior and that of the rest of society is distressingly small.

So, to use a phrase evangelicals have liked a lot over the years, “How Should We Then Live?” What is the basis for Christian morality in this diverse, busy, loud, postmodern age?

First, what it is not: it is not about identity politics from any perspective. It is not about being forced to hold a certain position of morality because that’s what our folks believe. It is certainly not about “liking” some random picture on Facebook.

We need morality framed in the discipleship of Christian community. We struggle together with questions in their complexity. We have to talk about sexual abstinence as a goal for young people while still recognizing the power of biology. We need to talk about the appropriate role of alcohol (that goes beyond the requirement of beer companies to tag “drink responsibly” at the end of the wild party commercial). We need to talk about the complexities of same-sex relationships. We need to consider what Justice looks like in a world of such inequality.

The scriptures provide us with guidance of general principle here but not specific answers. They suggest that the answer is “somewhere in that general direction” without drawing the line in the sand. We listen to the leading of the Spirit as we honestly strive together to engage in Holy Living.

The internet has been ringing this week with echoes of Rachel Held Evans CNN piece on millenials and faith (it’s getting almost as much play as Reza Aslan’s Fox Interview!). But millenials recognize that we live in a complex world. One in which simple answers that sell books in Christian bookstores won’t address.

I believe the evangelical church has much to offer the broader culture in terms of a human morality that is based in community and looking for the greater good. Doing so will require us to engage those different than ourselves in honesty and humility. It will call us to listen more than speak. It will mean that we have to tolerate ambiguity in a complex world. It will mean leaning toward shades of gray and not seeing things as black and white. It will mean being Christlike.

Why Social Justice Still Polarizes Evangelicalism

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While an undergraduate at Wheaton College, I once spotted a bumper sticker that pointed out: “Poverty, homelessness, and healthcare are moral issues too.”  It kinda blew my mind. At the time, I, like many young evangelicals, thought that the really important moral issues were all sex-related: homosexuality, extramarital sex, and abortion. 

That was 10 years ago, and I don’t imagine that many Christians today would be so taken aback by that bumper sticker’s sentiment. Which is great. Large numbers of evangelicals are now passionate about poverty, AIDS, violence, and human trafficking. The work of folks like Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis has paid off in important ways. Few would deny that poverty is an issue that the Church should address, because the biblical witness is unmistakable and unavoidable. 

And yet, if you bring up “social justice” during coffee hour in the church foyer, you’re still likely to evoke some strong and opposed feelings.  

How could social justice possibly become a source of division? I think it’s because US Evangelicals have very different ideas about how to pursue justice, and because we tend to caricature—even to malign and defame—those who disagree with us.

In the US, the polarization over social justice is especially pronounced because the two “sides” are separated in significant degree by a pair of factors: age and political party. 

“New Evangelicals” (to use Marcia Pally’s term) warm to Democratic social policies (even if many aren’t ready to join the Democratic Party); their new leaders (people like Shane Claiborne and Francis Chan) appeal more strongly to those under the age of 35 than to those with a maturing IRA. Conversely, the parents of those “New Evangelicals” tend to remain staunchly Republican.[1] In what may be a reflection of the characteristic vices of US two-party dynamics, neither evangelical group has proven terribly adept at appreciating the merits of the other’s perspective.

Various factors have contributed to the polarity, of which I’ll highlight three: spending habits, views of government, and views of the business sector. 

Spending habits: Younger, left-wing evangelicals are keen to advocate for social justice, sometimes stridently so. We buy Fair Trade, we wear TOMS Shoes, and are generally adept at consuming precisely those commodities that demonstrate (even broadcast) our social awareness. But for all this well-intentioned enthusiasm for justice, older and right-wing evangelicals have reason to arch their eyebrows at our other spending habits. Those of us in our 20s and early 30s have marinated in consumerism for so long that we can be rather short on thrift. We’re much more likely to purchase a coffee, a smoothie, or an MP3 on impulse than are people my parents’ age; the coffee that we buy is much more likely to cost $4 than $1.50. We make less money, but revamp our wardrobes more often. We tend to give less to our churches, and are more likely to criticize our church’s spending habits.  So we might do well to appreciate how our consumerism—even the consumerism that masquerades as activism—can inflect our rhetoric about justice and generosity, causing it to ring hollow in the ears of an older and thriftier generation that gives a good deal more money than we do. 

Views of government: the evangelical left often equates the instantiation of justice with liberal social policy and well-directed government spending. While affirming the place of charitable giving to the poor and to para-church organizations, the evangelical left tends to be much more optimistic about the efficacy of government interventions. Perhaps the younger generation has heard more about the structural factors operative in the perpetuation of social inequality, and are thus more prone to want to address structural problems through the greatest agent of structural implementation and maintenance: the government.

The evangelical right, by contrast, tend to be suspicious of government programs. “Big Government” (a moniker with obvious Orwellian overtones) is thought self-evidently sinister. The evangelical right is seldom sanguine about the efficacy o   of government programs aimed at poverty reduction, considering the Church and other philanthropists in the private sector as better able to effect positive change. To their credit, the evangelical right gives more than other Christian groups in the US (though obviously not all that giving goes to poverty relief and strategic development).

Views of the business sector: If “Big Government” is the bête noire of the right, “Big Corporations” are the villains of the evangelical left. A steady diet of investigative journalism has filled us with awareness of the abuses of which transnational corporations are capable. Still, left-leaning evangelicals are probably guilty of downplaying the need for good business and entrepreneurialism in the Majority World. It’s easy to malign capitalism and corporations when you’ve grown up in the US, where there is a robust economy, where we’ve not encountered the lag in productivity caused by bribery and corruption, where we’ve never lacked access to loans and consumer credit. The ease of the middle-class life in the US owes an incalculable amount to the hard-working and honest businessman. And insofar as reasonable financial security conduces to social-awareness, a strong market economy is also a key contributor to our ability to be concerned about and to respond to injustices. The barista in California can sponsor a bunch of children in Malawi; the coffee-grower in Nicaragua probably can’t.

The Christian pursuit of justice and mercy will likely be best served if our ecclesial and private generosity is coupled with the pursuit of progress through both government and business. (It’s awfully hard for businesses to help lift countries out of extreme poverty when governments are either corrupt or inept. Try building a successful restaurant or hotel without reliable access to water and electricity. Conversely, all the government spending in the world won’t jump-start an economy devoid of savvy entrepreneurs.) Both the evangelical right and left realize that power corrupts, whether the potent entity in question be a government or a corporation. Perhaps neither side sufficiently countenances the need to engage in the onerous, nitty-gritty work of helping power be less corrupt.

Very few evangelicals today will write off the place of social justice among Christian moral concerns.  Nonetheless, we will make more rapid progress in the practices of justice and mercy if those on the evangelical right and left learn to value each other’s point of view.

We have to oppose the tendencies of older conservatives to dismiss the younger liberals as naïve or foolish, as well as those of the younger to denigrate the older as recalcitrant or sold-out. Are these caricatures ever partially true? Sure, in some cases. Is there more to the story than this lampoonery reflects? Absolutely.  If occasionally naïve, young liberals are also hopeful and idealistic; if occasionally stuck in a rut, the older conservatives are also prudent and experienced.  Hope and prudence are both Christian virtues.

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By way of post-script, allow me to suggest that today’s need for respect and mutual appreciation between the evangelical left and right is mirrored by a need for respect and mutual appreciation between the theological professionals (who speak at great length about social justice) and the professionals in politics and finance (who are often the targets of our most-strident critiques). Today we are confronted with new questions about globalization, macroeconomic policy, and finance; we theologians and ethicists aren’t capable of answering these questions on our own. Gone are the days in which people’s knowledge of economics was so limited that that Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria could hold forth on a wide range of economic, mercantilist, and consumer behaviors. We theologians and ethicists may be able to help define the goals of wealth and justice, but we probably can’t say how to realize those goals. We need to learn from businessmen and economists in order to appreciate the apparently intractable realities of the world’s financial machinery. Christian businessmen, economists, and financiers can do much to help the Church confront 21st-century social challenges. But if they don’t feel respected by us—or, worse, if they feel villainized or caricatured—you can bet that they will write us off.

After all, turn-about is fair play. 

 

[1] As with any generalization, exceptions abound—there are certainly lots of young Christian Republicans and some middle-aged evangelical Democrats—but I don’t think this robs the generalization of its illuminatory power.

Topic #4: Evangelicalism and Morality

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Launch Date for the Conversation: August 1, 2013


American Evangelicalism stresses the centrality of the Bible for guiding Christian morality. The process of moving from the Bible to Christian moral formation is, however, not necessarily straightforward. Difficulties arise from many quarters, but one the Bible itself explores is the changing moral circumstances of Israel from patriarchs to Moses through monarchy, exile, and return, and then in the teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As evangelical Christians seek to live moral lives, both as individuals and communities, important disagreements sometimes arise. One important aspect of this is that the cultures within which Christians live is highly variable across both time and space. The line between applying Christian morality to new situations and compromising our morals can be quite difficult to discern. In light of these issues, some “leading questions” are

  1. What are the roles of the Bible and Christian tradition for guiding American evangelical Christians’ ideas of living a moral life?
  2. To what degree is moral formation a cognitive activity of working out what is  right and wrong, versus a character activity of building habits of moral action?
  3. Is the development of a moral vision an individual Christian activity, or is it a task given to local congregation or some broader group?
  4. How do past changes in Christian moral norms (for example, on slavery or birth control) inform engagement with pressures to re-work Christian perspectives on today’s hot issues (for example, homosexuality or social justice)?
  5. What are the proper ways for challenging the reigning evangelical views on particular moral issues? How should conflicting moral perspectives within Evangelicalism be brought into conversation?
  6. Is it useful for evangelical Christians to be in conversation with non-evangelicals and non-Christians about moral issues?