“There is now no recognized moral knowledge upon which projects of fostering moral development [can] be based.” -Dallas Willard, Divine Conspiracy, pg. 3
This very idea was reflected by Peter Steinfels in a column in this mornings New York Times. Commenting on the fading Religious Right but unfading ‘culture wars,’ Steinfels comments that the pluralistic nature complicates the contemporary trajectory of 21st century skirmishes within the broader culture war. In the face of enduring “significant cultural flash points like those over abortion and gay marriage [that] have not gone away” in the emerged plurality of 21st century America, there are deep disagreements over the nature of what is moral and even how the conversation should be framed.
As is inevitable within any pluralist society, those deep disagreements within the American religio-cultural fabric are “about the sources of moral authority, about the nature of knowing and the limits of scientific rationality, about how best to live out one’s sexuality, about purpose or accident in the universe.” And while “these are not directly or properly political questions, they are nonetheless public. They are struggled over in the marketplace, the arts and popular entertainment, like sitcoms and video games.”
As someone who has devoted my life to Jesus and God’s Redemptive Story, yea even going so far as to study to join the institutionalized version of that Story, I wonder how we are to reconcile this plurality with God’s single Story on Reality. If there is no longer any common ground, no tether to a single reference point (mainly Yahweh himself and His Story), how is our society to function, let alone the Church within that pluralist public square? In a war-torn country like USAmerica at the hands of an oft ugly culture war, how are we to foster morality with no agreement about the Source of moral authority? How are we to even know what is moral with no recognized, common moral knowledge? How do we help people be fully human when there is such stark disagreement about what it even means to be human? How do we explain the purpose of life in the face of an accidental, chaotic cosmic existence?
In short, how can the Church be the Church within a pluralist public square, especially one in which Her voice is no longer the dominant voice and is viewed as “totally unfit, not merely for the public life, but the personal life, as well”?
