{"id":22589,"date":"2019-04-08T03:13:27","date_gmt":"2019-04-08T10:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=22589"},"modified":"2019-04-15T00:22:37","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T07:22:37","slug":"conversion-in-great-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/conversion-in-great-divide\/","title":{"rendered":"The Conversion"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The title of Haidt\u2019s book, \u00a0The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion<\/em> gave me pause due to the current polarization of politics and religion in America today. Politics and religion is an area in which in recent years I have strayed away from entertaining for my sanity. Politics often shows the ugliest side of the human character in the United States and unwilling to admit but, it exposes hidden character flaws in the Christian brothers and sisters called to walk alongside us in this journey.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Every election a deliberation occurs to what is the acceptable allowance of negative and abusive verbiage, policies and who holds the most religious values from my fellow Christians in conversation and social media. In my mindset, politics in the United States is neither religious, spiritual or moralistic; it is about power and wealth.<\/p>\n

I digress; let us get to the content of the book even though after reading the first two pages of Chapter One of Haidt\u2019s book, a mental Rolodex scan of the book \u201cHow to Talk About a Book You Haven\u2019t Read\u201d, quickly occurred to see if I could avoid subjecting myself to this type of rhetoric. I understand that in higher education and especially in global studies we have to be knowledgeable of all aspects of religion, schools of thought, and politics; however, do we have been plunged into it?<\/p>\n

Well, guess we should not \u201cthrow out the baby with the bathwater.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Haidt identifies six innate moral foundations from his moral theory. The six are\u00a0care\/harm, fairness\/cheating, liberty\/oppression, loyalty\/betrayal, authority\/subversion, and sanctity\/degradation. It stated that this theory could be used to explain cross-cultural and political differences.\u00a0According to Haidt, \u201cliberals tend to endorse primarily the care and equality foundations, whereas conservatives tend to endorse all six foundations more equally.\u201d[2]<\/a> In response, I decided to take Haidt and his collaborator\u2019s moral foundation test at YourMorals.org\u00a0to determine if I am genuinely a conservative according to his research. The results came back, and at the tender age of 42, I am now considered liberal yet I still hold conservative moral foundations.<\/p>\n

There is a quote which states, \u201cIf you are not a liberal when you\u2019re 25, you have no heart. If you\u2019re not a conservative by the time you\u2019re 35, you have no brain\u201d.[3]<\/a> If this is the case, I am doing things completely backward.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What would make this once conservative now a liberal in Haidt study? Could my moral foundation have shifted from the innate to an adaptive moral judgment construct? Adaptive in a sense that as the world changes the moral construct of that foundation is shaken and experienced life-altering situations that call for adaption to occur.<\/p>\n

Moral judgment may differ among cultures; what is right in one culture could be wrong in another. Anthropologist Richard Schweder developed a set of theories emphasizing the cultural variability of moral judgments but argued that different cultural forms of morality drew on “three distinct but coherent clusters of moral concerns,” which he labeled as the ethics of autonomy, community, and divinity.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

For instance, I chose not to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I am aware it may be offensive to some. However, I adopted this stance in my early teenage years knowing that the freedom that my father and countless family members fought in the military for was not forthem. They return home to a place that did not treat them equally. Instead of being honored for their\u00a0sacrifice, they were still treated as a second class citizen and at times less than human. They were always derogatory names in uniforms with stripes and patches. Some may say that times have changed, but has it? Just turn on the local news or entertain an election debate and it will be clear things are still racial, volatile, and we are looking for a glimpse of light amongst the darkness.\u00a0Forgive me if I offend you for supporting the fact that there is not \u201cliberty and justice for all\u201d and that we are not a nation \u201cunder God,\u201d we have forgotten Him.<\/p>\n

Though Haidt\u2019s test places me as liberal, I still hold conservative values as well. After further research, I discovered my moral foundation politically equated to the following:<\/p>\n