Is a religious foundation necessary for a sufficient moral consensus?

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Introduction

We live in a country that disagrees with our religious foundation and thus lacks a religious consensus. The topic of religion and ethics will forever be a point of contention in every country. It’s unavoidable since every country and its leaders have their ultimate standards of authority by which they appeal to. Some say that it is impossible to have a sufficient moral consensus without a religious foundation, while others say that it is possible. In this essay I will demonstrate that the state must have a religious foundation for there to be sufficient moral consensus. I will defend my thesis through carefully defining my terms and showing the impossibility of the alternative.

Other Possible Views

One popular position against my thesis is the claim that societies do not need a religious foundation to come to a moral consensus in society. This view assumes that how we ought to live can be determined by pure cultural consensus, utilitarianism, or consequentialist concerns devoid of any reference to a religious foundation. One popular version of this is a “legal positivist” view that says that “there is no essential relationship between law and morality” and laws are merely a “creation of recognized institutions.” This becomes a creative way for them to avoid any accountability towards giving a robust definition for the foundation of their morality.[1] Related to this view is also a popular view that tries to embrace multiculturalism and pluralism for morality by putting the highest goal as the “ideal of authenticity, and where one’s own identity is being individually or collectively experienced and expressed” and those that make the most noise  “determines the political agenda.”[2] 

A second objection to my thesis comes from Christians that reject the need for the state to have a sufficient moral consensus in the first place. This is due to the view that the church is not of the world and thus should be distinct from the state. Thus, we should not expect a non-spiritual institution, the state, to have the same viewpoint on morality as the church. While there are more extreme versions of this viewpoint (i.e. Amish or isolationists cults) there are in fact some Christians that would argue that the church alone should be the moral conscience of the state and should not expect the state to have any religious foundation or moral consensus. Some could even argue that the example of the early church gives justification for this because “the church affected change in the only way available, by the formation of countercultural Christian communities throughout the ancient world that lived together in community, modeled the virtues, and fulfilled their calling to “seek the welfare of the city” they inhabited.”[3]  In this view, the state is almost always viewed as an institution that is disconnected from a religious foundation for morality and essentially an amoral government.

A third viewpoint is a somewhat middle ground between the two above and it affirms that there is a neutral, non-religious, common foundation that we can rationally agree upon without appealing to any type of religion. This view differs from the first view in that it believes that there is a natural law that all humans can discover and agree upon to govern society. This assumption is granted based upon the belief that there is a natural law that needs no justification or appeal to a higher standard outside of pure human reason. Simple appeals to human reason and common sense are sufficient in this view. One such example of this view is in a version a natural law argument for conjugal marriage that appeals to its “social role in binding men to women and both to the children born of their union” and how this view has been agreed upon historically with even non-religious traditions.[4]  In many ways this position is similar to my own, yet, as I will explain later, it falls short of connecting the dots with the ultimate justification of a sustainable moral consensus. Consequently, this view tends to act like Christian morality yet severs language that would connect its logical appeals to any religious foundation.

My view

First, I will make clear what exactly I mean in all the key terms in my thesis. A religious foundation is something that gives justification for a position that has inherent religious presuppositions. Whereas the atheist can affirm a natural law because they are “brute facts” that are “self-evident truths.”[5] Thus, the justification for this natural law springs from the “presumption of universality to Christian ethics that comes from the virtues and principles being grounded in God’s character and commands respectively.”[6] Walker also affirms this justification when he notes that natural law offers “a platform for common moral grammar” yet it does not imply “neutrality as to its foundation” since it is a “metaphysical system” that is a “religious doctrine” grounded in “divine causation.”[7]  Thus, since Christian ethics has a “transcendent grounding” in God’s character, all moral societies must at least assume truths of the Christian worldview to rightly function.[8]   Some may argue that morality can be knowable apart from God, but they would be confusing the epistemology (how we know) with ontology (the nature of being) of ethics.

Thus, discovering that the world is designed to function best within certain moral standards “does not mean that morality is necessarily independent of God.”[9] Contrary to the view that we need a mere consensus to determine morality, a religious foundation is the only option that can give us “objective values that are grounded in the creative activity of God, revealed in general revelation, deduced by reason and experience.”[10] Geisler explains that all moral obligations flow from [God’s]  nature are absolute” and are thus “binding everywhere on everyone.”[11] What’s more, since Christ created all things, He is the one who “orders” all things and if one ultimately rejects this foundational reality, “nature and reason are dismissed as well” which leads to living in the “absurd.”[12]

Next, I will explain what I mean by a sufficient moral consensus. Sufficiency implies that something must at least be adequate to function properly. For a moral consensus to be sufficient, it must have this be true about itself: that it has its “own integrity, or else general morality does not have what is required for it to be true morality- universality.”[13] As a result, it is woefully insufficient for a state to have a moral consensus that has no universal grounding in applying to all people in their governing land. Consequently, a sufficient morality to govern upon must be grounded in a transcendent moral realistic morality; hence, a religious foundation.

Second, the impossibility of having a sufficient moral consensus without a religious foundation will be explained. If the foundation of moral consensus is dependent on religious presuppositions (particularly Christianity), then living against the grain of reality will only lead to moral absurdities. In the Dutch Reformed Theological Journal, Raath points out how even the magisterial reformers admitted that it is a necessity for “the contents of and submission to the divine moral law as a minimum level in sustaining moral dignity in the comparative worth of human beings.”[14] Walker also points out the dangers of America society is disintegrating because of its rejection of its Christian foundation that has led to it being “under the weight of relativism and nihilism” and “irreconcilable visions”[15] 

Conclusion

       In summary, it has been demonstrated that it is impossible to have a workable or sufficient moral consensus in society without a religious foundation. While atheists can deny this foundation, they must admit that our healthy society depends on the metaphysical justification of morality that only comes from the Christian worldview.  In fact, when we carefully define our terms, we see that even defining a moral consensus is inherently linked to a religious foundation. We can’t even speak intelligibly about those terms without reference to a transcendent standard.   No true functioning state can try to govern justly without religious presuppositions influencing them.  This matters because every country and its leaders have assumptions behind every moral choice. Morality is always connected with metaphysics and influences how we live our everyday life in a small scale (family unity) and a larger scale (the state).

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Footnotes:

[1] Scott B. Rae, Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI; Zondervan Academic, 2018), 105.

[2]  Theo W.A. De Wit, “My Way”: Charles Taylor on identity and recognition in a secular democracy,” Stellenbosch Theological Journal 4, no. 1 (2018), 171.

[3] Rae, Moral Choices, 83.

[4] Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson and Robert P. George, What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense. 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2020), 10.

[5] Andrew Walker, Faithful Reason: Natural law Ethics for God’s Glory and our God (Brentwood, TN: B&H Academic, 2024), 138.

[6] Rae, Moral Choices, 72.

[7] Walker, Faithful Reason, 94-95.

[8] Rae, Moral Choices, 72.

[9] Rae, Moral Choices, 93.

[10]  Rae, Moral Choices, 106.

[11] Normal L. Geisler, Christian Ethics: Options and Issues (Grand Rapids, MI; Baker Books, 1989), 22.

[12] Walker, Faithful Reason, 242.

[13] Walker, Faithful Reason, 231.

[14] A. Raath, “Conjugal Union and moral dignity- the Early Reformers on the moral context of marriage and the minimum standards for sustaining moral integrity in society,” Dutch Reformed Theological Journal 49. No 3_4 (2008): 236.

[15] Walker, Faithful Reason, 56-57.

Bibliography

Rae, Scott B. Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics. Grand Rapids, MI; Zondervan Academic, 2018, 105.

De Wit, Theo W.A. “My Way”: Charles Taylor on identity and recognition in a secular democracy,” Stellenbosch Theological Journal 4, no. 1 (2018), 153-171.

Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson and Robert P. George, What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2020, 10-11.  

Walker, Andrew, Faithful Reason: Natural law Ethics for God’s Glory and our God. Brentwood, TN: B&H Academic, 2024.

 Geisler, Normal L., Christian Ethics: Options and Issues. Grand Rapids, MI; Baker Books, 1989.

Raath, A “Conjugal Union and moral dignity- the Early Reformers on the moral context of marriage and the minimum standards for sustaining moral integrity in society,” Dutch Reformed Theological Journal 49. No 3_4 (2008): 236.