The Moral Demands of Contemporary Life and Christian Moral Education

Abstract

There has always been, to some extent, an emphasis on Christian moral responsibility in the world, on the importance of Christians striving to connect their faith in meaningful and morally responsible ways with their everyday lives. As a pastoral minister and Christian religious educator, I have followed this emphasis in the Church and would venture that today it is becoming more pronounced and has taken on a distinctive character – despite the fact that there is often greater moral ambiguity and confusion in our everyday lives. Generally, in our increasingly complex, multi-faceted postmodern era there is a tendency within the pastoral life of the church to move away from understanding Christian faith as providing an overarching conceptual and explanatory framework of knowing and to move toward a greater focus on faith and ethics in everyday life; that is, on faith as providing pragmatic, now-centred guidance for moral reflecting and acting (See for example, Grenz and Lowe, Eds. 1986; Diehl 1991). In this chapter I propose that the church would benefit from a more intentional and concentrated focus on Christian moral education aimed at helping to enable people to meet more fully the moral demands of everyday pastoral life, the demands of Christian moral responsibility in the world. I begin by examining why pastorally focused Christian moral education has not become a major concern in the church. Then, to develop further and illustrate my proposal I examine from a religious educator’s perspective two pressing pastoral issues in the church today: the problem of the specificity of Christian convictions in a world where not everyone is a Christian, and contemporary confusions about the nature of moral reflection. I write from the perspective of a Catholic living in the United States. While my analysis inevitably reflects my specific life context, I have tried to write in such a way that my perspective will resonate with Christians, and to some extent with people from other faith traditions, whose life situations are different from my own.