In Praise of Stigma

In defence of moral judgment

Western society has become uncomfortable with a moral language that communicates ideals that touch upon the distinction between good and evil. The very act of moral judgment is routinely condemned as ‘preachy’ of ‘judgy. Instead, western cultural and educational institutions teach young people to aspire to become non-judgmental. From their perspective enlightened people do not judge others. That is why so you can hear the refrain ‘I am not judging you’ or ‘No judgment’.

Contemporary culture’s aversion to the drawing of a distinction between right and wrong is paralleled by the tendency of eroding the distinction between right and wrong. Teachers in schools and universities habitually inform their students that there is no such thing as a right or wrong answer. Some also assert that ‘there is no such thing as a stupid question’?

It is tempting to interpret the reluctance to judge or to make a clear distinction between rights and wrong as a symptom of the relativist temper of our time. But although relativism exerts an important influence on public life it itself is a symptom of a rejection of western society’s grammar of morality. This tendency also afflicts the field of theology. Individuals who possess strong religious beliefs risk being labelled weirdos. Section of the Church have accommodated to the marginalisation of a moral discourse by going native. A report published in the United Kingdom earlier this year noted that many new dioceses of the Church of England have jettisoned the use of the word ‘church’[i]. The report, New Things: A theological investigation into the work of starting new churches across 11 dioceses in the Church of England noted that term church has been replaced by a multitude of what they refer to as ‘new things’. Terms like community and congregation is preferred to church and words that have unambiguous traditional connotations.

New Things noted that ‘there has been an emergence of new ecclesial language across the Church of England; what we could call an espoused ecclesiology’. It is far from clear what is meant by the newly invented term espoused ecclesiology. It probably signifies an ecclesiology that a particular congregation uses to distance itself from the traditions and moral norms of the Church.

During the past fifty years the main substitute for the language of morality has been a discourse that interprets human behaviour through the prism of medicine and psychology.

In this way even faith and religious conviction has become medicalized. ‘Too much faith’ is sometimes referred to as ‘hyper-religious’ and those who exhibit this orientation to religion are sometimes diagnosed as mentally-[ii].

It has been suggested that people who have too much faith may be suffering from religious addiction. Father Leo Booth in his book When God Becomes A Drug warned of becoming ‘addicted to the certainty, sureness or sense of security that our faith provides’. John Bradshaw, one of the leading advocates of the American co-dependence movement, has produced a self-help video entitled Religious Addiction. ‘These tapes describe how co-dependency can set up for religious addiction, and how extrinsic religion fosters co-dependency’, notes the blurb advertising the video. Religious addiction is sometimes characterised as ‘spiritual obsession’[iii].

In case you are interested in the meaning of religious addiction, the webpage of a New Jersey rehab centre helpfully explains;

‘The signs and symptoms of religious addiction include shame-based beliefs, scrupulosity, judgmental attitudes, black-and-white thinking, inability to question, compulsive praying, believing physical pleasures are evil, conflict with science and medicine, isolation, and claiming to receive special messages from God’[iv].

Of all the symptoms of religious addiction listed above the main problem is that of ‘judgmental attitudes’.

According to the therapeutic entrepreneurs the most harmful effect of judgmental attitudes is that it can provoke a sense of guilt among people. At the same time some therapists assert that guilt itself, is a motivator for moral judgment[v]. Probably the most stigmatised negative emotion today is that of guilt. ‘Guilt, once considered unpleasant, but instructive, has become so dangerous as to be avoided if at all possible’, notes a study on American emotional culture. According to previous cultural norms, the feeling of guilt indicated that an individual was in touch with the moral expectations that prevailed. Since through the feeling of guilt an individual acknowledged expectations of right and wrong, the emotion was regarded as an important element in the process of socialisation. Today, guilt is regarded as a pathology, since through this emotion an individual subordinates the self to external demands. The feeling of guilt not only makes individuals unhappy, it also diverts emotional energy towards attending to demands imposed by wider society instead of cultivating the self. According to contemporary therapeutic culture, the emotion of guilt is responsible for the development of behavioural problems and personality disorders. Anglo-American parenting advice on discipline, for example, is now based on the belief that anything which makes children feel guilty should be avoided.

Yet, throughout the history of Western civilisation, guilt was widely regarded as a vital moral emotion. Indeed, the capacity to feel guilty is a defining feature of morality itself. The displacement of a moral discourse by a therapeutic one has emptied guilt of any positive content. The language of morality is also castigated as stigmatising and according to the therapy industry stigma has no place in a modern enlightened society. Terms like immoral and sinful have followed suit and are condemned as antiquated terms used by people who are simply not ‘aware’ of the need to free the world from the oppressive burden imposed through moral judgment

Emptying sin of its moral burden

They used to be called the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy, pride. They were deadly because they led to spiritual death, and thus to damnation.

Now, some theologians are not sure where to hold the line on sin, or even, indeed, if there is a line to hold. In our touch-feely therapeutic world, the idea of a ‘mortal sin’ that condemns the sinner to Hell comes across as a bit too final, even unreasonable. Today, the notion of personal guilt, which underpinned the idea of the seven deadly sins, seems only to exist in a caricatured form. Western culture can only make sense of the act of sinning as a symptom of some regrettable psychological disease. Behaviour that was once denounced as sinful is today discussed through the language of therapy rather than the language of morality. The old deadly sins tend to be looked upon as personality disorders that require treatment, rather than transgressions that deserve punishment

Secular societies have always felt uncomfortable, morally, with the idea of the seven deadly sins. The Enlightenment replaced the notion of sin, which is deemed to be an offence against God, with the idea of crime: an offence against other people. But secular rationalists still shared with religionists a belief that individuals are responsible for their wrongdoing. Since the latter part of the twentieth century, however, we have felt estranged not only from any religious universe, but also from the idea of moral or individual responsibility, and thus we find it difficult to describe aspects of human behaviour as ‘sinful’. Today, it seems there are no longer sinners; there are only addictive personalities.

Consider lust. Those who would once have been labelled lustful are now described as ‘sex addicts’ in need of therapy. Gluttony has been transformed into food addiction: apparently, gluttons no longer gorge themselves; they are simply suffering from one of many eating disorders. Some in the addiction industry insist that compulsive eating is a psychological disease with a provable biological cause. Alternatively, gluttony is looked upon as a disease that we call obesity.

Anger is deemed by some to be the most powerful emotional addiction. New conditions such as ‘road rage’, ‘computer rage’, ‘trolley rage’, ‘golf rage’ and ‘air rage’ suggest that the disease of anger can afflict individuals in any number of diverse settings. The therapeutic lobby claims that the solution to the condition of anger is to undergo stress- or anger-management therapy. So-called addictions to certain emotions are often given the medical label of ‘impulse-control disorder’.

Meanwhile, avarice and envy have been recast as the inevitable outcomes of our modern consumer society, and are also sometimes diagnosed as impulse control disorders. Apparently, ours is an addictive society which compels individuals to be envious of one another. ‘Spending addiction’, ‘shopaholism’, ‘compulsive gambling’ and ‘affluenza’: all are represented as diseases comparable to alcoholism and drug addiction in their detrimental impact on the sufferer.

Sloth has been medicalised, too! Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder provides an all-purpose explanation for why some people are reluctant to focus or to concentrate. And today, sloth apparently does not necessarily have to be a wholly negative condition. Some forms of sloth are celebrated as antidotes to our overworked, stressed-out, consumption-crazed culture. Hard work is often described as a risky enterprise today; apparently you risk contracting ‘workaholism’ if you take your job too seriously.

And finally, we come to the sin that the Church once considered to be the most deadly of all: pride. Of all the old moral sins, pride is the only one that has been completely rehabilitated as a good thing. That is why pride is never diagnosed as a disease. These days, virtually every social and psychological problem is blamed on low self-esteem. The solution to poor educational performance, teenage pregnancy, anorexia, crime or homelessness is apparently to raise the self-esteem of the victim. In our self-oriented world, society continually incites people to take themselves far too seriously, to be proud of everything they do no matter how minor or accidental it might be. Far from a sin, pride has become one of the prime virtues of our time.

It should be noted that the therapeutic imperative alters the concept not only of sin but also of virtue. In the Middle Ages, practicing the seven contrary virtues — humility, kindness, abstinence, chastity, patience, liberality, diligence — was believed to protect one against temptation towards the seven deadly sins. Today, people who practice some of these virtues are just as liable to be offered counselling as those who are tempted by sin. Kindness? Too much kindness may lead to compassion-fatigue. Diligence is sometimes dismissed as the act of someone suffering from a 'perfectionist complex'. Humble people lack self-esteem, and chastity is just another sexual dysfunction. Virtue is not so much its own reward as a condition requiring therapeutic intervention.

Whatever the problems associated with stigmatizing immoral or antisocial behaviour they pale into insignificance in comparison to treating individual adults as powerless patients possessing addictive personality. The language of morality is oriented towards taking human beings seriously. It regards people as possessing the capacity for moral agency and possessing the potential for overcoming their moral failures. The fear of stigma and shame also discourages people from adopting forms of behaviour that is harmful to themselves and members of their community. In contrast the medicalization of human behaviour deprives individuals of their agency. People who are constantly told ‘that it is not your fault, ‘don’t feel guilty’ or that ‘you are addicted for life’ become obsessed with their vulnerability and are likely to find it difficult to take control over their lives.

Encouraging people to regain a sense of moral agency is not simply essential for the development of a robust sense of human agency but also for the flourishing of all the values that underpin democratic public life.

Happy New Year Everyone!!! Looking Forward To An Exciting And Intellectually Inspiring Year

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[i] https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2024/16-august/news/uk/new-churches-are-dropping-the-word-church-report-finds

[ii] https://psychcentral.com/blog/manic-depression/2012/09/18/religion-and-mental-illness-how-we-define-hyper-religion-and-what-does-that-mean#1

[iii] https://valleyspringrecovery.com/addiction/behavioral/religious/

[iv] https://valleyspringrecovery.com/addiction/behavioral/religious/

[v] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5423941/