Mapping the Moral Order 343
expanding the legitimate bases of conscientious objection was one important element
of the widespread antiwar activism in the 1960s and 1970s.
Another more recent example, and one that is missed by simple bipolar conceptions
of cultural conflict, is the public discourse around abortion and capital punishment. The
irony of people’s positions on the value of human life has been pointed out by partisans
on both sides of the abortion and capital punishment debates. That is, pro-choice parties
in the abortion debate accuse pro-lifers of being concerned about saving the life of the
fetus, but being unconcerned about the lives of the mothers, or of prisoners on death
row, or of victims of American military interventions. Pro-life parties, on the other
hand, suggest that pro-choicers are inconsistent in being willing to “kill” innocent
unborn children, yet being unwilling to kill convicted murderers and rapists.
However, the seeming paradox in this debate vanishes if we consider it in light
of the “moral order map” I propose. That is, the accusations of each party ignore the
location of the specific issues with respect to the larger moral questions, since the issue
of abortion is primarily an issue of the locus of moral authority, while the issue of
capital punishment concerns the moral project.
The point I want to highlight here, however, regards the impact of peripheral groups
on the mainstream discourse. A relatively recent development in the public debate is
the entrance of Protestant and Catholic groups located “off the diagonal” in the south-
east corner of the moral order map who oppose both abortion and capital punishment
and refer to themselves as “consistent pro-lifers.” They have built alliances with groups
on both sides of the culture wars, thus opening space for accommodation and, at least
potentially, mitigating tension. For example, there are emerging groups like Common
Ground, a Midwestern organization that brings together pro-choice and pro-life ac-
tivists in cooperative efforts toward lowering rates of unwanted pregnancies and pro-
viding services such as improved prenatal care to women who find themselves in that
position.
Understanding the New Religious Pluralism
Sociologists of religion have come to understand that religious pluralism in North
America constitutes an important form of American exceptionalism, raising impor-
tant questions about grand theories of secularization and modernization. Over the past
two decades, one of the most important debates within the sociology of religion has
been over how pluralism has affected religious participation in the United States and
elsewhere. Warner (1993) provides a synthetic review of this debate, pointing to the
emergence of a “new paradigm” in the sociology of religion that views pluralism as one
key source of continued religious vitality in the United States.
In much of this literature, pluralism is treated as a given and the debate focuses on its
consequences. Problematizing pluralism, that is, paying attention to the distinctions
that constitute pluralism in the United States, may shed some useful light on these
ongoing questions. The moral order map I propose would suggest that not all pluralisms
are alike. Thekindof distinctions that are salient in a given social context may have
important effects on religious participation. Furthermore, some communities may seem
very pluralistic when denominational measures of pluralism are used; but if all the
relevant religious groups are clustered in one sector of the moral order map, then it
may be incorrect to define that community as “pluralistic.”