The Moral Reasoning of U.S. Evangelical and Mainline Protestant Children, Adolescents, and Adults: A Cultural–Developmental Study

Abstract

This cultural-developmental interview study examined moral reasoning in relation to religious culture (evangelical, mainline Protestants), age (children, adolescents, adults), and moral issue (public, private; N = 120). Compared to adolescents and adults, children used more Ethic of Autonomy and less Ethic of Community reasoning. With age, differences between religious cultures became pronounced. Mainline adults invoked an Ethic of Divinity for private issues. Evangelical adolescents and adults used this ethic frequently, but more for public than private issues. These and other findings indicate that evangelical and mainline Protestants diverge on what should be society's moral lingua franca, and cast new and nuanced light on America's "culture wars." Results furthermore highlight comodulation of development and culture that requires life course research on moral reasoning.

From Autonomy to Divinity: The Cultural Socialization of Moral Reasoning in an Evangelical Christian Community

“…As hypothesized, Divinity concepts were almost exclusively introduced by parents, which is consistent with research on individual moral reasoning that demonstrates the importance of Divinity in the moral reasoning and outlooks of adult members of evangelical Protestant, Mormon, and fundamentalist Baptist churches (Jensen, ,b, ; Jensen & McKenzie, ; Padilla‐Walker & Nelson, ) and the low use of Divinity among young children in these groups (Jensen, ; Jensen & McKenzie, ). For their part, children most often invoked Autonomy concerns in these conversations, especially those relating to literal equality and to an individual's psychological and physical well‐being and interests, which is also consistent with previous research on the individual moral reasoning of children (Eisenberg, ; Jensen & McKenzie, ; Killen & Smetana, ; Kohlberg, ).…”

“…Walker, Pitts, Hennig, & Matsuba, 1995). Consistent with this view, research using the Three Ethics Approach has demonstrated that Divinity concepts are especially prioritized in the moral reasoning of adult members of U.S. religious cultures that emphasize scriptural authority, such as evangelical Christians, fundamentalist Baptists, and Mormons (Jensen, 1997a(Jensen, ,b, 1998Jensen & McKenzie, 2016;Padilla-Walker & Nelson, 2015). These adults recruit Divinity concepts to justify and determine a wide range of moral judgments, including their stances on suicide, incest, interracial marriage, and parental use of physical discipline, as well as reallife personal issues from participants' own lives.…”

“…For example, Pandya and Bhangaokar's () analysis of children's moral reasoning in Gujarat, India, revealed that children as young as 8 years of age often appealed to Divinity concepts in their moral reasoning. In U.S. evangelical Christian groups, by contrast, recent cross‐sectional research suggests that Divinity justifications emerge in children's moral reasoning during early adolescence and increase into adulthood (Jensen, ; Jensen & McKenzie, ). Thus, although younger children demonstrate rich and multifaceted concepts of spiritual entities and phenomena (Boyatzis, ), children being raised in some U.S. evangelical Christian faiths do not necessarily incorporate those concepts into their moral reasoning.…”

“…In particular, scholars have noted the strikingly inverse relation between Divinity and Autonomy development. Specifically, although Divinity reasoning is low during childhood and increases between adolescence and adulthood, Autonomy reasoning is high during childhood and steadily declines during adolescence and adulthood in these groups (Jensen, ; Jensen & McKenzie, ). By contrast, Divinity does not show this inverse developmental relation with Community, which progresses consistently during childhood and is frequent during adulthood within these cultural groups.…”

“…Although children are prepared to develop a range of these possible moral goods, their cultural communities selectively prioritize only some moral goods and rationalize them in distinct ways. These cultural rationalizations are reflected in different ways that individuals use Autonomy, Community, and Divinity in their moral reasoning across cultural groups (e.g., Arnett, Ramos, & Jensen, 2001;Guerra & Giner-Sorolla, 2010;Haidt, Koller, & Dias, 1993;Jensen, 1995Jensen, , 1997aJensen, , 1998Jensen & McKenzie, 2016;Vasquez, Keltner, Ebenbach, & Banaszynski, 2001). Three Ethics theory is ideally suited for this study because it provides a broadened picture of the moral realm that explicitly includes Divinity as a viable line of moral reasoning.…”