334 Fred Kniss
standards (i.e., the nature of “goodness,” “beauty,” and “truth”). The second issue ad-
dresses the question of where moral action or influence should be targeted. That is, if
goodness, beauty, and truth are to be enhanced, what needs to be changed? There is
something of a parallel here to Weber’s (1925/1978) distinction betweenwertrational
(value rationality) andzweckrational(instrumental rationality). That is, the issue of
moral authority is concerned with the grounds for defining or evaluating ultimate ends,
while the question of the moral project is concerned with means to those ends. The
former provides the foundation for central values. The latter provides the foundation
for particular policies.
Identifying two distinct ideological dimensions can help us to distinguish some
key differences between various bipolar theories. That is, the restructuring theories of
Wuthnow and others focus on issues related primarily to the second dimension, reli-
gious or political moral projects. Hunter, by contrast, deals primarily with tensions over
the question of moral authority. Furthermore, the poles on each dimension represent
the tension between the individual and the collective that most analysts of American
political culture have noted. On the first dimension, the locus of moral authority may
reside in the individual’s reason or experience or it may reside in the collective tradition.
On the second dimension, the moral project may be the maximization of individual
utility or it may be the maximization of the (collective) public good. While I am provi-
sionally presenting these two dimensions as dichotomies forming distinct ideal types,
the later discussion will indicate that I actually view them as spectra along which a
wide variety of ideas may occur. The two dimensions are crosscutting and interact in
complex ways.^2
With respect to the first issue (locus of moral authority), the paradigm ofmod-
ernismholds that the fundamental authority for defining ultimate values (goodness,
beauty, and truth) is grounded in an individual’s reason as applied to and filtered
through individual experience. Reason is located in particular individuals in particular
times and places. Thus, there is a denial of traditional transcendent absolute authority.
Authority is always subject to rational criticism and legitimation. Ethics are situational,
in that determining the good requires the application of reason to particular circum-
stances. Since modern society is based on reason in the form of scientific technologies
and rational forms of social organization, modernists are optimistic about progress and
tend to be open to change. Furthermore, insofar as rationality is basic to human nature,
human nature is basically “good.” There is within modernism, therefore, an inherent
trust in human beings resulting in an emphasis on individual freedom and civil liber-
ties. The expressive individualism of recent decades noted (and often decried) by many
of the scholars discussed above is a product of modernism as a fundamental paradigm.
Within religion, modernism has been the focus of much conflict during the past
century. Modernism legitimized rational criticism of ecclesiastical and biblical author-
ity. Religious modernism holds that (a) religious ideas should be consciously adapted to
modern culture, (b) God is immanent in and revealed through human cultural devel-
opment, and (c) human society is progressively moving toward the realization of the
Kingdom of God (Hutchison 1982). Religious conservatives have, of course, opposed
(^2) Will and Williams (1986) propose a similar typology. However, by making “right versus left”
one of the dimensions, they preclude the possibility of anomalous paradigm configurations of
the sort I will discuss later.