"Moral clarity"

When fundamentalists claimed they voted for George W. Bush because he offered “moral clarity,” the rest of us were thrown into amazed thoughtfulness.

A situation in Brazil shows what that kind of “moral clarity” gets us. A 9-year-old girl weighing about 66 pounds, who had been repeatedly raped by her stepfather since she was 6 years old, was pregnant with twins. In Brazil abortion is illegal except in cases of rape or danger to the life of the mother. For protecting the life of the girl by choosing abortion, the mother and her doctors were publicly excommunicated by the Catholic archbishop, who declared abortion is "a crime in the eyes of the church" and that human laws cannot override the laws of God.

This conflating and confusing of God with Church rules was common in Christendom during the Middle Ages, and it lingers in ultra conservative circles, even among educated and intelligent Catholics in the U.S. The situation in Brazil illustrates in an extreme way how a spiritual principle such as respect for human life can degenerate into rigid, reflexive opposition to something. Instead of moral clarity we see simplistic rules. In some instances, abortion or condoms or euthanasia may not be the worst choice.

I give one Vatican official credit for having the grace to be appropriately embarrassed. The president of the Academy for Life criticized the Brazilian archbishop’s declaration, saying it was “insensitive, incomprehensible and devoid of mercy.” You’ll find story details at Hasty excommunication.

Stories like this give evidence of shifting religious awareness. More such comes from the latest PEW survey on religion in America, which reveals that profound changes are happening in religious affiliation Change or drop religion. Christian denominations are losing numbers quickly—only non-denominational churches show more growth than losses.

Of particular interest to me is the growing number of “unaffiliated” (now at 16.1%), which includes atheist (1.6%), agnostic (2.4%) and "nothing in particular." Most interesting is that these people are not hostile to religion but leave the one in which they were raised, apparently because particular beliefs and practices don’t matter to them, while spirituality does.

The survey didn’t touch on the difference between spirituality and religion, but I think the results of this and other surveys show that Americans increasingly distinguish between them. Percentages vary in polls and terms for spiritual reality vary, but an overwhelming majority of Americans—from 92 to 95 percent—say they believe in “God” or “Higher Power” or “Universal Spirit” Believe in spiritual. So say even atheists as well as people who move from one church to another, or to no church. And some people raised in no religion at all develop a spiritual orientation.

Paradoxically, in this American cauldron of diversity, which has more religious variety than any other nation, religious absolutism still flourishes. Those who can’t tolerate ambiguity cling to familiar interpretations of morality, to familiar conceptions of what we call God and familiar ways to relate to It. In fact, I attribute the growth of religious fundamentalism during the ‘80s and ‘90s to people’s uneasiness about changes they couldn’t avoid seeing. They’d like a return to simpler times when answers came in well-worn religious phrases, when deciding between right and wrong didn’t pose a puzzle.

As we move through the century, I expect the yearning for old-time religion to decrease and diversity of spiritual practice to increase. At this stage in the evolution of human consciousness we have the task of replacing simplistic religious formulas with authentic moral clarity.