Mapping the Moral Order 335
this view as an attack on “fundamentals” and a challenge to traditional authority
(Marsden 1980).
Traditionalism, in contrast to modernism, holds that the definition of ultimate
values is grounded in the moral authority of the collective tradition. Rather than fo-
cusing on the free individual actor, emphasis is placed on individuals as members of
a collectivity, a social group defined by its relation to some higher authority. Au-
thority transcends the particularities of person, place or time. It is absolute and not
subject to criticism. The nuclear family, as the smallest, most basic collectivity under a
common authority is particularly valued. Practices which are seen to threaten it (e.g.,
promiscuity, homosexuality, or abortion) are opposed with special tenacity. In religion,
traditionalism takes the form of obedience to ecclesiastical and scriptural authority.
Ethics are not situational, but absolute. Individual actions are expected to contribute
to the social good. Traditionalism stresses submission to the collectivity and restraint
on individual appetites. Respect for transcendent authority is paralleled by a respect for
transcendent values. The goal of change, then, is not progress toward perfection, but
recovery of traditional values. Modern culture is not seen as progress so much as a fall
from paradise.
On the second dimension (locus of the moral project), the paradigm oflibertari-
anism, like modernism, asserts the primacy of the individual. It holds that the primary
moral project is the maximization of individual utility, that is, it applies individualism
to questions of economic and political relationships. The ideal economic system is the
free market where free individuals acting in their own rational self-interest compete for
resources. Economic growth is encouraged as a way of making more goods and services
available to everyone. Growth in these terms requires unrestrained individual striving
and minimal regulation by the state. Networks formed by the individual pursuit of
self-interest in a free market are the bases of the social bond. Hence, only a minimal
state is required – one whose function is protection of individual rights but is not con-
cerned with the provision of social services or regulation of the economy.^3 The religious
counterpart to libertarianism holds that the primary moral project is the individual’s
salvation and moral improvement. The problems of the world can be solved “one soul
at a time.”
As libertarianism is to modernism, socommunalismis to traditionalism. That is,
communalism takes the principle of individual submission to the collective good and
applies it to questions of economic and political organization rather than questions of
ultimate value. The moral project is the collective good rather than individual utility.
A regulated market is valued over an unregulated free market. Egalitarianism is valued
over limitless self-interested striving. The state is expected to promote these values by
enforcing the redistribution of resources. (Entitlement programs are an example of
public policy based upon the paradigm of communalism.) The state is also expected to
curtail individual self-interested action when it threatens public goods such as environ-
mental quality, public safety, or public health. Communalism may be applied across
generations, as when today’s wage earners support Social Security payments to the el-
derly or when conservation policies are justified as necessary to preserve resources for
future generations. In religion, communalism identifies the primary moral project as
“building the kingdom of God,” establishing an alternative social order rather than
(^3) Robert Nozick (1974) offers a philosophical justification of this paradigm.