{"id":80186,"date":"2025-02-07T06:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-02-07T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=80186"},"modified":"2025-02-07T08:59:41","modified_gmt":"2025-02-07T13:59:41","slug":"on-virtue-signalling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2025\/02\/on-virtue-signalling\/","title":{"rendered":"On Virtue Signalling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
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Virtue signaling<\/a> is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary<\/a> as \u201can attempt to show other people that you are a good person, for example by expressing opinions that will be acceptable to them, especially on social media.\u201d\u00a0 The definition goes on:\u00a0 \u201cVirtue signalling is the popular modern habit of indicating that one has virtue merely by expressing disgust or favour for certain political ideas or cultural happenings.\u201d [The \u201cour\u201d in favour and the double L\u2019s in \u201csignalling\u201d reflects British usage.]<\/div>\n
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The term is usually applied to expressions of \u201cwokeness.\u201d\u00a0 It is not enough to avoid saying things that are \u201cpolitically incorrect.\u201d\u00a0 One must also overtly say things to prove that you belong to the correct group.<\/div>\n
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Examples would include yard signs<\/a> expressing some version of this creed:<\/div>\n
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In This House, We Believe,<\/div>\n
Black Lives Matter<\/div>\n
Women\u2019s Rights Are Human Rights<\/div>\n
No Human Is Illegal<\/div>\n
Science Is Real<\/div>\n
Love Is Love<\/div>\n
Kindness Is Everything.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Or when Whole Foods<\/a> puts up a poster that says, \u201cWe are part of a growing consciousness that is bigger than food \u2014 one that champions what\u2019s good.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Or when corporations boast about how diverse and green they are, even when they are nothing of the sort.<\/div>\n
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British journalist James Bartholomew is credited with popularizing the term, in its pejorative sense, in a piece he wrote for The Spectator<\/i> in 2015, entitled \u201cThe Awful Rise of \u2018Virtue Signalling<\/a>,'\u201d in which he complained,<\/div>\n

No one actually has to do anything. Virtue comes from mere words or even from silently held beliefs. There was a time in the distant past when people thought you could only be virtuous by doing things\u2026[that] involve effort and self-sacrifice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Recently, another British publication, Unherd<\/em>, published an article by Kathleen Stock entitled \u201cWhy Virtue Signalling Won\u2019t Pay<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 After discussing the failure of The Good Literary Agency and the financial problems of the Good Law Project, she advances the concept by pointing out the other side of the coin:<\/div>\n
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The flipside of being so mesmerised with superficial markers of virtue is that you are also shallow and credulous about what counts as vice. And so we find adults who genuinely think it plausible that a tech billionaire, well known for his enthusiastically awkward gestures, would deliberately perform a Nazi salute at a post-inauguration Presidential rally, as the latest stunt of those subtle intellects at\u00a0Led By Donkeys\u00a0suggests they do. Or we get the sort of people who interpret \u201cJewish\u201d as identical to \u201cZionist\u201d, and \u201cZionist\u201d as identical to \u201cgenocidal maniac\u201d without noticing any moral variations under those first two headings \u2014 as a former Save The Children staffer did in a TikTok video this week,\u00a0to her cost.\u00a0 [Referring to a young woman who asked where she could buy anti-Zionist bagels.] And on the other side, we also get those who automatically equate \u201cPro-Palestinian protestors\u201d with \u201chate marchers\u201d. Obviously, there can be deliberate political strategy behind a particular decision to lump certain categories rather than split\u00a0them, but equally, it sometimes seems that the art of fine moral discernment is just generally dying out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Stock makes a good point, that those oriented to superficial markers of virtue will also look for superficial markers of vice.\u00a0 I\u2019m intrigued by her last observation, that conservatives sometimes do this sort of thing too.<\/div>\n
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Some are saying that just as there is a woke progressivism, there is a woke conservatism.\u00a0 What might be some examples of conservative virtue signaling?<\/div>\n
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Is there a Christian virtue signaling?\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to imagine that, since signaling that you are a Christian\u2013say, by wearing a cross or putting up a church yard sign\u2013is to confess that you are not<\/em> virtuous, that you are a miserable sinner saved only by the crucifixion of the Son of God.<\/div>\n
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Nevertheless, there have always been temptations for Christians and other religious folk to trumpet their righteousness, that is to say, their self-righteousness.\u00a0 This, of course, is what Jesus complained about in his condemnation of the Pharisees.\u00a0 To give but one of many examples:<\/div>\n
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\u201cWoe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people\u2019s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.\u00a0 (Matthew 23:27-28)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Behind this impulse for self-righteousness and the need to display that to others is a tacit recognition that morality is real and that we feel an obligation to abide by it.\u00a0 Ironically, many secularists who deny Christianity (since \u201cscience is real\u201d) and who defy historic morality (since \u201clove is love\u201d) are the very ones who are most intent on virtue signaling.<\/div>\n
This is an encouraging admission, an acknowledgment of the existence of virtue and an admission that they want to be virtuous.\u00a0 The problem, though, is that they are engaged in a futile attempt at self-justification.\u00a0 When we fail to be righteous, we can change the definition of righteousness so as to fit our own behavior.\u00a0 We thus justify ourselves.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Or, when we fail to be righteous, we can give up on trying to justify ourselves and instead have God justify us.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have to declare ourselves righteous when God declares us to be righteous.\u00a0 This happens when we are united with Christ by faith, so that\u00a0 God the Son atones for our moral failures and we become clothed in His righteousness.\u00a0 \u201cFor all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith\u201d (Romans 3: 23-25).<\/p>\n

Photo:\u00a0 \u201cIn This House, We Believe. . .<\/a> \u201d by Lorie Shaull from Washington, United States \u2013 In this house, we believe\u2026, CC BY-SA 2.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=55513784<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The different varieties of virtue signaling at least acknowledge the reality of virtue and our inner need to be virtuous. These, however, are attempts to justify ourselves. Far better is the way God justifies us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":80339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10,15,36,37,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-christ","category-ethics","category-politics","category-psychology","category-theology"],"yoast_head":"\nOn Virtue Signalling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The different varieties of virtue signaling at least acknowledge the reality of virtue and our inner need to be virtuous. These, however, are attempts to justify ourselves. 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