Moralism Old and New
Vol. 57 No. 42 | The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity | September 13, 2026
When the Gospel Goes Missing
Some people on their vacations go wine-tasting, but I go sermon-tasting. It is a rare opportunity for me to hear what other preachers are teaching their people. What are they saying is wrong with the world? How is it to be put right? Where is God in this—and where do we need to be? As in prior forays, this year’s sampling of sermons exposed a depressingly common misunderstanding of the Christian religion: which is Christianity primarily as a moral teaching, and Jesus primarily as a moral teacher and example.
This is not new. For much of the twentieth century, mainline Christianity presented itself as a broad-minded and humanitarian faith – liberal in the best sense of the word. Jesus stood at the center as the supreme teacher and example of this liberal ethic. To be a Christian was, above all, to follow his example by becoming a better, kinder person, more generous, more compassionate. There is of course much truth in this—yet something essential was lost. Jesus remained at the center, but the center no longer carried much weight. What mattered was chiefly what Jesus taught and the example he set. Much less was said about something Jesus had done—something that only he could do—and what difference that made. The doctrines of redemption and regeneration faded into the background. Christ crucified for our sins, risen for our justification, reconciling us to God, incorporating us into his Body, and giving us the Holy Ghost: these became inspiring myths and metaphors. Christianity was less the proclamation of God’s saving action in Christ than an exhortation to live according to Christian ideals, increasingly conceived in terms of earthly wellbeing. As early as 1937, H. Richard Niebuhr captured the shallowness of this religion: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
In recent decades, this older humanitarian moralism has increasingly given way to a progressive moralism. Its vocabulary is different. It is concerned with structures of power and solidarity with those identified as oppressed, excluded, or marginalized. Jesus remains the moral authority, now invoked less as the model of humane decency and more as the champion of the marginalized. Leaving aside for now further critique, here too there is something Christianity must recognize. Scripture has a great deal to say about the poor and powerless. The Law commands justice and mercy for the widow, orphan, and stranger, and the prophets condemn those who exploit the weak. A Christianity indifferent to the suffering of its neighbor—or unaware of the structures of power within which we all act—is hardly Christian. Yet once again the emphasis can fall upon what Jesus requires us to do rather than upon what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. Which is to say, it becomes moralism.
Moralism is not the same thing as morality. Christianity has a moral teaching. Moralism arises when that teaching is detached from the gospel. When the Bible approaches moral questions, it begins with what God has done—what we are to believe—and only then that draws out the consequences for our lives—what we are to do. First the indicative of doctrine, and then the imperative of ethics. God has acted; therefore we act. You have died with Christ; therefore put sin to death. You have been raised with Christ; therefore seek the things that are above. If Christianity begins instead with the imperative—this is what you must do—then Christ becomes essentially the giver of an assignment. He tells us what righteousness looks like, and it remains for us to demonstrate that we possess it. Thus moralism turns into self-justifying pride.
There is now a new and distinctly populist moralism growing in reaction against the progressive one. I doubt that it makes it into many Episcopal pulpits—but it is only a click away on your device. It prizes strength over sensitivity, defiance over deference, authenticity over respectability, shock tactics over tactful sensitivity. Its heroes are those willing to challenge elites, violate polite conventions, and say aloud what others are afraid to say. Here too the impulse is not wholly mistaken. Hypocrisy should be exposed. Tired orthodoxies need challenging. Conformism and cowardice should be challenged. The new conservatism has exposed real failures that an older liberal consensus often ignored: the weakening of family and community, social isolation, economic dislocation, the loss of meaningful work, declining religious belief, and the erosion of inherited cultural institutions.
Yet the reaction can produce its own path of self-justification. The progressive says: I am righteous because I stand with the oppressed.
The populist says: I am righteous because I refuse to submit to the corrupt establishment. One demonstrates righteousness by sensitivity; the other by defiance. Both divide the world into the righteous and unrighteous, and both provide ways of assuring ourselves that we belong among the righteous. But the gospel begins not with our righteousness (however conceived) but with God’s mercy toward the unrighteous. Christ does not come to teach good people how to become better: he comes to save sinners; for he alone is our righteousness.