Is the right more passionate about the positions they hold than the left? In his book, The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt identified six moral passions of our species. His perspective might provide an answer to my question. The six moral passions he describes are, Care versus Harm, Fairness versus Cheating, Liberty versus Oppression, Loyalty versus Betrayal, Authority versus Subversion, and Sanctity versus Degradation

The first moral passion is care versus harm. When we see a child being mistreated, we all experience moral revulsion and are driven to intervene. We want to see children being cared for, not harmed. That is the strongest moral passion for most people.

The second is fairness versus unfairness. We all know life is unfair, but nevertheless, it bothers us. In the United States women earn 84 cents on the dollar of what men earn.. African-American women earn 67 cents on the dollar, Native American women 64 cents on the dollar, and Hispanic-American women 57 cents on the dollar. That is not fair, and we want to bring about change.

The third moral passion is freedom versus oppression. The desire to be free birthed the US as a nation. The fight against oppression continues today, as people of color, the LGBTQ+ population, and others fight for the right to be free from oppression.

All three of these moral passions are held by all Americans in fairly equal measure. But while we all want care versus harm, fairness versus unfairness, and freedom versus oppression, how we define care, fairness, and freedom and for whom differs greatly from one group to another.

The remaining three moral passions are more often held by the right than the left. The fourth is loyalty versus betrayal. To understand this passion, we need to shift for a moment from moral passions to moral standards. While there are six moral passions, there are three moral standards for our species.

The first and oldest moral standard is that there is no greater moral good than to protect the integrity of the tribe. The second, common to all forms of religious fundamentalism, is that there is no greater moral good than to obey the teachings of the gods. Those on the right often hold to one or both of those moral standards.

Those who lean politically left hold to the third moral standard, that there is no greater moral good than to protect the freedom of the individual. This is the youngest of the three, though it is the most common standard in Europe and the secular US. It is in the very core of the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,, that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.

Those who hold to this third moral standard, that there is no greater good than to protect the freedom of the individual, speak often of a person living their truth, which is an indication that we believe, all things being equal, that the locus of control should be within the individual..

If you hold one of the first two moral standards, then the moral passion of loyalty versus betrayal is in the warp and woof of your moral standard. Loyalty to the tribe and/or the gods is paramount.

If your moral standard is the freedom of the individual, then you are more likely to accept the likelihood that individuals will change their loyalties as they grow and develop. A switched loyalty may have nothing to do with betrayal. It may be moving from one stage of faith to the next, or one hierarchy of need to the next. It’s nothing personal, just an outcome of personal growth.

A fifth moral passion is similar to the fourth. It is authority versus subversion. Growing up as an evangelical Christian, my insatiable curiosity was not seen as a positive trait. The Bill and Gloria Gaither tune, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it for me” was the mantra of college and seminary classmates and professors.

If you hold to the third moral standard, that there is no greater good than to protect the freedom of the individual, then subversion is a way of life. Disrupting systems is in your DNA. Calling out injustice is imperative.

For those on the right, questioning authority is anathema. You decide which tribe is yours, which god is yours, and you unquestionably follow them.

Derek Flood in his book Disarming Scripture says that in the Judeo-Christian tradition there were always two different kinds of religious followers. One group was unquestionably obedient and comfortable letting someone else do their thinking for them. The other group could be called faithful questioners, understanding there is a trajectory to religion that will bring about changes in understanding and practice over time, based on the growth and development of the species over time. It is interesting to note that when he quoted Hebrew scripture texts, Jesus quoted the faithful questioners, not those who were unquestionably obedient.

The current cultural wars have been initiated by those who are unquestionably obedient.  They are not interested in the conclusions of science or common human understanding. They are not open to questioning, because that would be subverting authority.

The sixth moral passion, also the realm of the religious right, is sanctity versus degradation. This is the logical outcome of viewing scripture as sacrosanct and set in stone. Any adjustment of views is not due to accumulated knowledge leading to new conclusions. It is degrading the perfection of the original.

This view of scripture did not come into being until the Modern age arrived with the Renaissance and carried through the Enlightenment. After 1500 years of Western civilization’s focus being on God, the focus shifted to science. As science became more respected and religion less respected, religious leaders sought respectability according to the scientific method popularized during the Modern age. Scripture went from being seen as a narrative history of God’s people to being seen as a book of facts, rules, and regulations.

This led to woefully inadequate attempts to prove the world was created in seven twenty-four hour days, that the earth is six thousand years old, and that every species was saved on Noah’s Ark. It also led to the very unfortunate doctrine of inerrancy, the belief that the original copies of scripture were without error in every jot and tittle. Never mind that we don’t have the original copies of scripture. The closest we have are fragments of copies of copies. Nevertheless, the Southern Baptist Convention purged its seminaries of “liberals” who did not believe in inerrancy.

The truth is that scripture never claimed to be inerrant. The notion of inerrancy hadn’t been invented yet. It was a Modern age adaptation of the wrongly understood scientific method  toward a Christian end. To accept anything other than the conviction that the original copies of the Bible were without error was a degradation of the Christian message.

Unfortunately, what that entire Modern age Christian agenda accomplished was not to make Christianity respectable. It was to take the focus off of Jesus and place it on the inerrant Bible. We moved from worshipping Jesus to worshipping the Bible, from Christology to bibliolatry.

These last three moral passions do help us understand why the religious right is more dedicated to their platform and ideology than the religious left. One group works from all six moral passions, while the other only works from the first three.

What is the solution to this dilemma. Yeah, I’m not sure. I keep waiting for Jonathan Haidt to write a new book that lays out a path forward for the left, but so far that hasn’t happened, though his book, The Coddling of the American Mind did give us a starting point. His newest book, focused on the damage smartphones are doing to our young people, looks promising, but not within this realm.

If you know if someone addressing this issue, let me know. I’d be happy to bring that information to all of you.