Conservative Christianity provides the ideological vision for many American conservatives, and it may provide the basic moral framework for many more Americans who neither claim church membership nor spend time in churches. In various polls conducted from 1997 to 2000, 76% of Americans believed in the biblical account of creation, 79% believed that biblical miracles happened, 76% believed in angels, the devil, and other spirits, 67% in existence after death, and only 15% believed that evolution is the best explanation for human existence. (Of course, it isn’t “the best” explanation for many purposes.) [Pinker 2002, p. 2]
Christian fundamentalism embraces the view that certain beliefs are fundamental to Christianity. The concept developed first within the Presbyterian church in the early 1900s. The beliefs that define fundamentalism are:
With this in mind, I looked to the Bible to see what a Bible believer might believe about morality. Following is a summary.
The four gospels are narratives of the teaching career of Jesus the Galilean. They quote his teachings. Less than twenty percent of the words spoken by Jesus in Matthew, the first gospel, are moral teachings. Most of that is in the form of specific rules for behavior. The other gospels are similar.
There are hints of general principles in his teachings. The golden rule (“do onto others,” etc.) is mentioned twice in Matthew. The golden rule is infinitely generalizable and extensible, but this is my interpretation, not something emphasized by Jesus.
Near the end of Matthew, describing the end of the age and the arrival of the kingdom of heaven, he tells us that he will say to us then that “as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me,” declaring an unqualified obligation to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, and go to one in prison. This could also be extended, but again this is reading between the lines. And his meaning for “my brethren” is sufficiently ambiguous to meet all needs.
Jesus preserved the Jewish law, which focused largely on agricultural torts, family law, and ritual worship.
In Jesus’ world, moral knowledge comes through revelation and teaching, not through inquiry and analysis.
The kingdom of heaven is transcendently wonderful but hard to obtain. It requires perfection. If you’re out, you burn in hell or weep and gnash your teeth in the darkness.
Demons exist and cause physical and mental infirmities accompanied by sin.
Your ability to benefit from providence (divine or magical justice) depends on your faith, which is your level of belief in Jesus’ claims.
Humans are required to forgive and forbidden to judge one another. They may however accuse and convict. When they do accuse, the accused must admit his culpability, regardless of what actually happened or any uncertainty in the rules, or suffer exclusion from the community. Whenever two or more believers agree, they are right and have God’s blessing.
The kingdom of heaven is hierarchically organized, in the sense that there are formal offices with formal powers for some, including some who were originally human. Besides this, individuals in the kingdom have higher or lower standing depending on their past behaviors or beliefs. Failure to follow the rules may result in obliteration, eternal torture, or eternal isolation instead of entrance to the kingdom. People are assumed to comply with moral rules in order to avoid punishments and obtain rewards. Religious violence is justified and employed by God. Co-religionists merit special treatment.
Divine providence exists: God ensures that the good are rewarded and the bad are punished on earth. A kind of self-actuated providence is available to believers, to churches, and to groups of believers.
Paul was an early missionary of Christianity whose influence on Christian belief may be greater than that of Jesus. Paul’s specific teachings are often inconsistent with those of Jesus, but have the same authoritarian character.
Paul removed the necessity for Christians to do good works. He made the obligation for charity conditional.
Paul promulgated a large number of additional behavioral rules for congregants. He encouraged Christians to isolate themselves from others with different beliefs. He encouraged his congregants to behave well especially toward other congregants.
He promoted the idea that knowledge of the moral realm flows to men through legitimate teachers. He discouraged critical discussion among believers. He preached that it’s OK to afflict those who afflict you.
The first five books of the old testament (Genesis, Exodus, etc.) promote obedience to the will of God by following rules and rituals. They portray people as rebellious and incorrigible and needing coercive guidance.
The Christian church grew from Jesus’ ministry into the state religion of the Roman Empire over about four hundred years. Christian dogma developed in an authoritarian institution under the supervision of the authoritarian Roman Emperors. The church was used as an institution of social control and supported by the Emperors largely for that purpose. It developed the view that faith, now meaning willingness to accept the moral supervision of the church, was necessary to win the approval of God and to avoid his punishments; that disobedience to the church is disobedience to God; that only the church hierarchy was qualified to interpret God’s intent to men. Finally, the early church developed the view that we can escape moral responsibility by following orders we deem to be legitimate.
It is no remarkable insight that Christian interpretations are highly various; that they range from highly conservative to moderately liberal; that beliefs are held with varying degrees of commitment; that all kinds of people call themselves Christian. The evidence that I’ve presented, though, shows that the world described by the Bible is an authoritarian world in which non-compliers are threatened with the most extreme penalties, and unimaginable rewards are offered for compliance. In that world we are asked to comply with rules and not to make reasoned judgments. People require supervision and punishment to behave themselves. Truth comes from legitimate authority, not from observed reality.
Authoritarian ideas attract those who find them attractive, and those who find authoritarianism attractive are comforted by pro-authoritarian messages. Let he who has ears hear.
Well, not entirely different, but from an entirely different perspective. Cognitive neuroscientist Steven Pinker published his book “The Blank Slate” in 2002. [Pinker 2002] The blank slate that Pinker wrote about is a metaphor for the notion that we are born with no programming, no innate attitudes or behaviors.
As Pinker relates, the blank slate eased into Western thought in an important way in the late 17th century through the writings of English philosopher John Locke. At that time, such ideas belonged to political philosophy. Locke proposed an alternative to the accepted conservative theory that claimed the existing hierarchical order of the world reflected the innate nature of man. Nobility was hereditary not merely by social convention but as part of the natural plan of things. The natural plan was naturally God's plan. Common men were common and unfit to rule even themselves. Each of us had his natural place in the order of things. [Pinker 2002, p. 5] This argument is familiar to Americans as the argument in support of slavery, Jim Crow, and economic inequality.
It wasn’t happenstance that Locke’s idea emerged in 17th century England. It followed the English revolutions against Charles and James, the Stuart kings. Those revolts created the need for an ideological alternative to the divine right of kings.
Nor was the new idea, that kings don’t in fact rule by divine authority, uncontested. The collapse of the monarchical government permitted a “leveling” movement which had visible impacts during the wars. Soldiers demanded a voice and nearly succeeded in affecting the political settlement. All manner of radical changes were proposed and tried, up to and including the great apostasy of land redistribution. Religious practice became effectively un-regulated and diverse at times and places, and orthodoxies were enthusiastically cast off. Reaction followed. The dispute goes on.
Locke’s writings didn’t go so far as to deny any influence of heredity. That was to come much later. The discussion started as one about power and developed in a circuitous way. Thomas Hobbes, another English political philosopher, wrote his “Leviathan” also in the 17th century, advocating strong government as the antidote for a life that would otherwise be “nasty, brutish, and short.” A stronger ruler would provide a more-effective government.
Rene Descartes, in 17th century France and not troubled by civil war, developed what we now call Cartesian dualism or mind/body dualism. His contribution to the discussion was philosophical justification of the notion that our moral faculty (“soul”) is separate from our body. This preserved a place for the soul side-by-side with a physical body that science was making look like a complex clockwork mechanism.
In 18th century France, Rousseau imagined the noble savage, born capable, innocent, and fundamentally good, and needing a very different type of governance than the mulish and perverse European peasants, the ancestors of me and many of you.
A theory of human nature is also a theory of mind. These European philosophical notions illustrate some of the views that have been advocated and suggest some of the political contexts in which these views have been considered important. Pinker isn’t a philosopher or an historian. His interest in writing “The Blank Slate” was to comment on a modern theory of human nature which he believes interferes with our ability to live with our own natures.
There has been a nature/nurture debate ongoing certainly since before Darwin within science, religion, and politics. The extreme view that there is no inborn human nature has, in his view, become a hindrance to understanding within some of the social sciences, and also in political problem solving. For many people, belief in a Blank Slate has “the mentality of a cult, in which fantastical beliefs are flaunted as proof of one’s piety.” [Pinker 2002, p. x]
Some of Pinker’s specific concerns are a bit specific to the academic world he pursues his career in, but his professional viewpoint as a student of cognition provides insights into the significance of conservative Christian ideology.
Pinker’s prime concern in “Blank Slate” is not to analyze Judeo-Christian ideology but to explicate the importance of theory of mind in our larger endeavor to understand ourselves.
As an example of theory of mind in political theory, consider our ability to accurately perceive reality. This has been an area for large advances in neuroscience during recent decades. If we can’t accurately perceive reality, it calls into question some basic premises of democratic rule, of economic markets, and even of self-management. If we perceive not reality but merely our momentary preferences, we are necessarily inept at self-rule, and our market choices maximize not utility, but gratification of our preferences. [Pinker 2002, p. 198] Accurate perception isn’t of course a yes/no question, and Pinker advocates that we use the knowledge we have about this to minimize risk.
Being a qualified expert and going where I dare not go, Pinker characterized a Judeo-Christian theory of mind, based on Biblical stories. In this view:
Humans are made in the image of God and are unrelated to animals. Women are derivative of men and destined to be ruled by them. The mind is an immaterial substance: it has powers possessed by no purely physical structure, and can continue to exist when the body dies. The mind is made up of several components, including a moral sense, an ability to love, a capacity for reason that recognizes whether an act conforms to ideals of goodness, and a decision faculty that chooses how to behave. Although the decision faculty is not bound by the laws of cause and effect, it has an innate tendency to choose sin....Mental health comes from recognizing God’s purpose, choosing good and repenting sin, and loving God and fellow humans for God’s sake. [Pinker 2002, pp. 1-2]
When Pinker says above that “the decision faculty is not bound by the laws of cause and effects,” he refers to the belief that the moral decisions we make aren’t determined by the interaction of history with the current situation.
This Judeo-Christian theory of mind isn’t a “blank slate” theory, but a contrasting theory that our mind has specific set features, based upon the testimony of the hereditary priests of a bronze age religion. Pinker raised it to illustrate its significance in our community life.
The significance of that theory of mind is found in its logical implications. If the mind is immaterial, then science can provide only a partial and misleading view of human nature. The ability of science to contradict nonscience about human nature is thereby limited. If our moral sense is a faculty of the immaterial mind, then it can possess qualities unexplainable through science, or even qualities that contradict scientific knowledge. If the mind’s decision faculty “has an innate tendency to choose sin,” then we have a need to be regulated, as the Bible seems to assume. Again this is not subject to rational inspection or refutation. If mental health results from alignment with God, then suffering comes from the lack of such alignment.
Pinker points out that belief in the need for hierarchical leadership in politics, business, and religion is a standard component of conservative ideology (Pinker 2002, p. 131), and that concepts of human nature affect deliberations about education, communication, crime, social relations, and in general, the design of institutions to achieve or promote our goals. [Pinker 2002, p. 195] (And note how this echoes the basic conservative premise.)
The moral sense known from the Judeo-Christian theory of mind coexists with a different moral sense known from systematic professional observation and analysis. (A good subject for a sermon?)
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has defined four families of social emotions that comprise the moral sense:
| Other-condemning emotions | contempt, anger, disgust | induce punishment |
| Other-praising emotions | gratitude, moral awe | induce reward for altruism |
| Other-suffering emotions | sympathy, compassion, empathy | induce helping |
| Self-conscious emotions | guilt, shame, embarrassment | induce good behavior and remediation of wrongs |
We feel these four classes of social emotion in three contexts:
Whatever narrative you personally use to explain your existence in the world, I think you would agree that these social emotions perform social functions. Other-condemning emotions motivate scrutiny and supervision of others. Other-praising emotions motivate appreciation for “pro-social” acts. Other-suffering emotions motivate communal aid. Self-conscious emotions motivate self-regulation.
These processes are emotional but they can be guided by cognition. From this perspective you could say that the shalls and sha’n’ts of the Bible are guides to when each of the four emotional programs should be activated. On the other hand, Jesus’ exhortations against anger and toward forgiveness can be interpreted as advice to beware the other-condemning emotions. (See A Causal Chain for Conservatism?)
The “gut” nature of these emotions and the strength of the actions they can evoke also suggest that the impulse to activate these moral programs is not one to follow without caution. A number of other specific shortcomings of this moral sense have been pointed out.
The confusion of purity with divinity allows segregation and oppression against others who can be deemed impure. (See Disgust and Conservatism.)
Anger excuses and facilitates violence.
Guilt, shame, and embarrassment are akin to deference to power, as can be seen by noting the similar behaviors they invoke. This may help explain the connection between childhood punishment and adult authoritarianism. Deference to power is certainly related to respect for authority, which in turn reinforces deference, and can easily confuse the ability to grant or withhold benefits and punishments with moral standing. This is an important mechanism in the functioning of cults and total institutions. [Pinker 2002, p. 271]
Choices made from a moral frame of mind often differ from choices made from a frame of utility. Examples that have been studied include vegetarianism, smoking, homosexuality, and others. An individual can change from a utilitarian frame to a moralistic frame in a switch-like way, with a sudden change of attitude as the consequence. The utilitarian frame can seem to conservatives, when they are in a moralistic frame, as a de-moralizing or profaning of life. Progressives, on the other hand, have “moralized” behaviors such as playing with Barbie dolls, politically incorrect speech, disposable packaging, toy guns, etc. (There’s a list, p. 276 of Pinker.) Sacredness, taboos, and concepts of sin make it difficult to evaluate the consequences of actions, as does framing positions as sanctified. Respecting taboos signals a commitment to the ideology from which the taboo derives. [Pinker 2002, p. 275]
The emotional nature of the moral sense can complicate and frustrate decisions. “Each party to a dispute can sincerely believe that the logic and evidence are on his side and that his opponent is deluded or dishonest or both. Self-deception is one of the reasons that the moral sense can, paradoxically, often do more harm than good....” [Pinker 2002, p. 265-6] Like the strictures of the Bible, the moral sense is more suitable functionally and interpersonally for guiding day-to-day behavior than for political decisions or system engineering. The emotional grounding of morality insidiously causes “a tendency to confuse morality with conformity, rank, cleanliness, and beauty.” [Pinker 2002, p. 294]
Conservatives often believe that there can be no morality without a God, and having God with you, as David demonstrates in his psalms, empowers strong emotion. “People...feel justified in invoking divine retribution or the coercive power of the state to enact the punishments [for acts they deem immoral.]...Our moral sense licenses aggression against others as a way to prevent or punish immoral acts.” [Pinker 2002, p. 269-70]
Scientists have tried to test the performance characteristics of the moral sense. “Moral dumbfounding” involves positing situations which are sensed as immoral, although no cogent explanation can be given. Examples of scenarios which have been used to provoke dumbfounding include using an old flag to clean the bathroom, or eating the family pet after it was killed by a car. Infractions of certain sexual taboos provide additional examples. They illustrate the vulnerability of the moral intuition. [Pinker 2002, p. 270-1]
The moral faculty interacts with reflexive (automatic, unconsidered) decision-making to create further risks. Advances in cognitive science are clarifying these.
The term “stereotyping” is often used in talking about attitudes toward groups, but the word has a neutral general meaning. We make sense of the world by generalizing and abstracting. While this has drawbacks, it also has cognitive power that we’d be hard-pressed to forego.
Pinker further warns, based upon the research, that “people’s ability to set aside stereotypes [i.e., categories] when judging an individual [or situation] is accomplished by their conscious, deliberate reasoning.” [Pinker 2002, p. 205] A corollary to this may be that people who believe in a soul which automatically makes moral judgments would tend not to engage in such “conscious, deliberate reasoning” about political questions. They might even regard such deliberate reasoning as dangerous, that is, likely to lead into error. Further, “stereotypes are least accurate when they pertain to a coalition that is pitted against one’s own.” [Pinker 2002, p. 206]
In this connection he also mentions the metaphors and metonyms that we use in everyday speech and thought, as “metaphors and metonyms that nudge listeners into grasping connections.” [Pinker 2002, p. 209] Both metaphors and metonyms verbally replace one thing, the reality that is under discussion, with another. Metonymy does this by simply applying a different name to a thing. (As in, for example, “the bell of freedom.”) When these verbal techniques are used, they transfer characteristics of the metaphorical substitution or the metonym to the original subject. This makes it quite easy to mentally transfer characteristics from one thing to another, and conscious attention is needed to prevent this.
Our innate cognitive abilities according to modern science consist of a different set of modules than the Judeo-Christian theory of mind contemplates. The modules include an intuitive biology, whose “core intuition” is that living things have an “essence” that gives them form and abilities, and that controls their growth and bodily functions. They also include an intuitive psychology, which we apply most importantly to other humans, but also to everything that we anthropomorphize. Its core intuition is that human actions are motivated by beliefs and desires, which are the proximate cause of behavior. We call the faculty that has beliefs and desires, and expresses them in behavior, the mind or soul. These scientifically identified modules have already-known ways of functioning that lead to characteristic mis-beliefs. (See Attribution in Conservative Ideology.) [Pinker 2002, p. 220-1]
The intuitions that these inbuilt cognitive modules produce allow themselves to be wrapped in a broad range of justifying narratives, consistent with a range of moral and cosmological positions. Many, perhaps all, religious ideologies can be explained either in terms of their own narratives or in terms of these fundamental and ancient cognitive modules.
Our cognitive modules are linked strongly to our emotional modules. Danger is linked to fear, contamination with disgust, and moral transgression with righteousness, etc. Our history and our life experiences point to their power. These systems are “primitive,” in that our human systems are quite analogous, structurally and functionally, to those of other mammals and even birds. The “primitiveness” of the systems is important to understanding their nature, since it implies that they are fundamentally important to social life. (Recall that even solitary mammals and birds are social.) [Pinker 2002, p. 221]
In contrast to the work of our default cognitive modules, which provide “common sense” or “prima facie” or “intuitive” understanding, scientific findings can’t be understood intuitively, but must be studied on. This is why we have science, and it's why science, engineering, and medicine require such a large educational investment. A lot of this investment goes toward suppressing common sense intuitions. Since scientific reasoning is not natural and simple, it needs substantial motivation and effort to work correctly. Scientific and engineering errors are hard not to make. [Pinker 2002, p. 221]
Pinker suggests that our theory of a soul may emerge from the combination of our empathy (with the intuition that others have desires and goals) and our ‘natural’ theory of mind. [Pinker 2002, p. 224] Thus both the soul and Plato's forms may be artifacts of our own brains rather than things that exist outside of them.
The debate on abortion illustrates the difference between beliefs based upon our intuitions and those based upon biologic science. Intuitional concepts related to the origin of a soul conflict with biology. His discussion of this is detailed, but I’ll just pass along a simple quip. “Identical” twins develop when a fertilized embryo splits. He asks whether the soul, if created at conception, is split into five parts when quintuplets develop. [Pinker 2002, p. 228] The notion of ensoulment at conception parallels the story of the creation of man in Genesis, in which God breathes life into dust. The Greeks equated the spirit with the literal breath of man (or of deer, for that matter). The parallels between these stories may be the result of our intuitive biology.
Another vulnerability of intuitional morality is represented in the emotional strength of kinship ties and of in-group/out-group distinctions, which are related and probably derive from them. “Unrelated people who want to share like a family create mythologies about a common flesh and blood, a shared ancestry, and a mystical bond to a territory....The dark side of this cohesion is groupthink, a cult mentality, and myths of racial purity—the sense that outsiders are contaminants who pollute the sanctity of the group.” He’s referring to a phenomenon that continually recurs, especially conspicuous when it is least helpful. [Pinker 2002, p. 247]
Un-managed intuitive morality has many perils that are now well-established. Not only is their occurrence known, much is known about their mechanisms. “[P]eople are most inclined to help a stranger when they can do so at a low cost, when the stranger is in need, and when the stranger is in a position to reciprocate.” [Pinker 2002, p. 255] Jesus was concerned about this same problem. Pinker advocates that scientific knowledge play a greater role in the management of our moral machinery.
When you turn your conscience over to a tradition or to an institution, what are you left with?
R. Anon. H.
If your parents teach you to obey the established rules, that rules are not subject to discussion or negotiation, that you must obey them whether they seem quite right to you or not, they are telling you to adopt an external referent for your soul. You soon discover that the rules go far beyond those that are stated and that there are consequences when you get it wrong. If they terrorize you, physically, socially, or fantastically and metaphysically, you grow up with a sense of being morally inadequate. The rules become embedded and are a major concern to you, since your own social acceptance, perhaps your mental and physical health, depend on your knowledge and understanding of them.
If you live your adult life with a sovereign but foreign voice sounding inside, there must arise occasions when you pose questions to it. You may not challenge it, but you must use it to solve novel problems. The stakes may be new and unfamiliar and intimidating to you. The situation may seem novel, that precedents don’t apply. You must sense it when you find your internal voice giving ambiguous or conflicting solutions. What do you do? Maybe you study a rule book, if you have one, or you consult a moral expert, if you know one, or you feel out your reference group. Do you question the foreign moral engine, or do you question yourself? Are you morally inadequate?
Does your moral engine have general principles? Specific rules? Do you check them for consistency? How do you process the inconsistencies, if you find them? Do you have a Get Out of Jail Free card, or is it One Strike, You’re Out?
Whatever you decide, your commitment is to this alien authority, not to your own sense of right and wrong. What is the basis of your commitment to this alien moral computer? At its base, are you frightened by its authority and its power over you? Are you inspired by its rightness?
I can’t see how this latter reaction could be. If you have no personal moral engine, you have no basis for admiring the implanted one, because you have no independent sense of right and wrong, good or bad. Your ongoing commitment to it is based on habit, social ties, people watching you, fears realistic and imaginary. What reward have you for obeying this engine? It must be an extrinsic reward, since you have no independent moral sense. Your friends and family may like or even admire you for your positions, or they may not. And if they don’t, you really have no options other than to accept this and try again, or to find new friends and family.
When this is the case, when the implanted rule engine decides what is good and bad, what is precious and what is execrable, it must be difficult to maintain a commitment to its decisions. Perhaps this is why conservatives are so concerned about the fragility of the normative order; it’s an introspective concern. It must also be difficult to be enthusiastic, to marvel and admire life, if your values are overridden by this outside force.
Life needn’t be that bleak. You could begin with simple stated rules, perhaps augmented with some simple principles, and you could develop your own moral sense. Through the marvel of your abstract associative brain, you will develop some general principles and specific rules which are functionally equivalent with the external rules, to the extent you need them to be. Then they would be your rules.
How do you manage the gap between your internal rule engine and the external master rule set? How long do you remain a moral apprentice? What does it mean when “you” see it differently than “it” does?
I suppose the difference between the two scenarios is one of degree.
Next: Living in a Conservative World
© 2021, Ross A. Hangartner