{"id":33096,"date":"2017-05-31T08:17:10","date_gmt":"2017-05-31T12:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=33096"},"modified":"2017-06-02T11:15:07","modified_gmt":"2017-06-02T15:15:07","slug":"evangelicals-moral-relativism-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/05\/evangelicals-moral-relativism-is-dead.html","title":{"rendered":"Evangelicals: “Moral Relativism Is Dead”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u201cMoral Relativism Is Dead,\u201d declared Ted Olson in Christianity Today<\/a>\u00a0last March:<\/p>\n

\n

Elvis. Tupac. The ivory-billed woodpecker. Sometimes it\u2019s hard to let go and acknowledge when a celebrity or a species has left us. Christians find it particularly hard to come to terms with the passing of the \u201cmoral relativist.\u201d Yes, there is the occasional reported sighting in the local university\u2019s philosophy wing or at the late-night dorm room\u2019s impromptu debate club. But compared to this creature\u2019s former range and numbers, they\u2019re all but extinct in the wild.<\/p>\n

Many Christian preachers, apologists, evangelists, and writers have taken heed of the declining numbers, but decades of pitting \u201cChristian worldview\u201d against \u201cmoral relativism\u201d left habits that are hard to break. You\u2019ll still hear Christians assume that the reason for so much rampant immorality in our culture is because people reject objective right and wrong. Many still assume that discussions over morals are likely to end with, \u201cWell, that\u2019s your truth, but I have mine.\u201d Make no mistake: Disputes over morality are as strong as they have ever been. But if we view these disputes through the lens of \u201cmoral relativism,\u201d it\u2019s not only our understanding of our culture that will suffer. Our evangelistic witness will also be severely blunted.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I lived in the evangelical bubble until the mid-oughts. I don\u2019t have personal experience with the world\u00a0outside of this bubble during\u00a0the 1980s and 1990s.\u00a0I do<\/em> have personal experience being taught to see<\/a> moral relativism as the antithesis of Christianity, with its supposed moral absolutes, and being taught that moral relativism held sway in the world outside my\u00a0evangelical bubble. When I left that bubble, what I found bore little resemblance to what I\u2019d expected to find.<\/p>\n

I appreciate that Olsen recognizes that the battle he is fighting today is not one of evangelicalism v.\u00a0moral relativism\u2014but then, I wonder whether\u00a0it ever truly was.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m\u00a0not saying there is nothing is different about\u00a0the twenty-first century,\u00a0compared\u00a0to the decades that preceded it. Things absolutely have changed in a variety of\u00a0ways.\u00a0The Atlantic noted this last year<\/a>\u00a0in an article titled \u201cThe Death of Moral Relativism\u201d (no, Olson\u2019s piece was clearly not original):<\/p>\n

Thoughtful conservatives who are less concerned with waging culture wars have begun to admit that such a shift is occurring. In\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0last week, David Brooks argued that while American college campuses were \u201cawash in moral relativism\u201d as late as the 1980s, a \u201cshame culture\u201d has now taken its place. The subjective morality of yesterday has been replaced by an ethical code that, if violated, results in unmerciful moral crusades on social media.<\/p>\n

A culture of shame cannot be a culture of total relativism. One must have some moral criteria for which to decide if someone is worth shaming.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome sort of moral system is coming into place,\u201d Brooks says. \u201cSome new criteria now exist, which people use to define correct and incorrect action.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think we need to make several distinctions here.<\/p>\n

First, we need to distinguish between what might be called \u201cspiritual relativism,\u201d on the one hand, and moral relativism on the other. I suspect that when evangelicals have lambasted \u201cmoral relativism\u201d over the past fifty and more years, what they\u2019ve frequently meant is spiritual<\/em> relativism. You\u2019re Hindu? That\u2019s cool. You\u2019re not religious at all? Fine by me. And so forth.<\/p>\n

Because evangelicals frequently equate religion and morality, spiritual relativism has often read as\u00a0moral<\/em>\u00a0relativism\u2014even when it\u2019s not. And regardless of what may or may not be happening vis a vis moral relativism, this spiritual relativism has definitely not disappeared\u2014if anything, it has increased.<\/p>\n

Second, we need to distinguish between having morals and how we enforce<\/em> morals. The rise of a \u201cshame culture\u201d today does not mean\u00a0there were no moral absolutes in the past. I don\u2019t believe\u00a0young people\u2014and it is\u00a0typically young people accused of being at the center of \u201cmoral relativism\u201d\u2014shrugged their shoulders at rape, or murder, or genocide in 1990.<\/p>\n

Moral relativism has often been a slippery term. I would argue that true moral relativism\u2014a belief that there is no right and no wrong\u2014is unsustainable. Of course, moral relativism is often defined as a belief that each culture has its own\u00a0set of morals\u2014and that morals are rooted in and specific to individual\u00a0cultures, rather than absolute. And to be sure, there is truth to this. But then, consider the emphasis on stopping genocide, or ending India\u2019s child bride practice.<\/p>\n

Olson says moral relativism is dead, but was it ever truly alive? Efforts to end genocide, or child marriage\u2014efforts that stretch back generations and span political affiliations\u2014point to a belief in underlying absolutes. I\u2019m deeply skeptical of\u00a0evangelicals\u2019 decades-long use of\u00a0\u201cmoral relativism\u201d in their messaging.<\/p>\n

As the Atlantic notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Four years before he was hoisted to Speaker of the House, a smooth-faced Representative Paul Ryan\u00a0declared<\/a>, \u201cIf you ask me what the biggest problem in America is, I\u2019m not going to tell you debt, deficits, statistics, economics\u2014I\u2019ll tell you it\u2019s moral relativism.\u201d It was a bold claim given the depth of the economic recession, which began years earlier. But Ryan was echoing the sentiments of his conservative ancestors who\u2019d made similar claims.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For decades, evangelicals have appealed to \u201cmoral relativism\u201d to suggest that they stand for morals and values\u00a0while their opponents don\u2019t.\u00a0<\/em>When you think about it, that\u2019s pretty disgusting. It\u2019s also completely inaccurate. For decades, the Left has pushed for programs like the SCHIP, which provides medical care for free children, and poverty-alleviation efforts\u2014affordable housing, subsidized childcare, workers\u2019 comp. One of the underlying moral values of the Left is that a society should take care of its own\u2014and that all people should have access to healthcare, food, and housing.<\/p>\n

My intent is not to get into the particular beliefs or values of the Left, but rather to point out that most activists have always believed in absolutes. Oh certainly, there will be differences between cultures, but there is an underlying ethos that isn\u2019t relative. Why else would you see civil rights activism, and efforts to end Apartheid? Why else would you see the women\u2019s movement burgeon into efforts to elevate women\u2019s position worldwide through education and financial uplift?<\/p>\n

I think back to what I was taught as a child, growing up in an evangelical home and community. We have moral absolutes,<\/em> I was told, we believe in right and wrong.<\/em> Everyone else does what is right in their own eyes\u2014whatever makes them happy. Might makes right, survival of the fittest, etc. Outside of our evangelical bubble, I was taught, morals were relative,<\/em> not absolute.<\/p>\n

Giving me a more accurate view of those outside our bubble might have made me feel less lied to\u00a0when I ventured out to see it for myself. So yes, we can talk about new directions in our moral culture, but let\u2019s not pretend that evangelical warnings about\u00a0\u201cmoral relativism\u201d were every anything more than a disingenuous scare tactic.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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