ERIC Number: EJ1466811
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-1946
EISSN: EISSN-1532-6993
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Developing Secular, Non-Dominant Moral Capital in Nonbeliever Communities
Educational Studies: Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, v60 n6 p640-658 2024
Nonbelievers experience harmful marginalization because of the persistence of the immoral nonbeliever stereotype. Nonbelievers is a broad affinity category that includes individuals who are skeptical of religion and identify using terms like atheist, agnostic, secular, humanist, spiritual, and non-religious. Across cultures, nonbelievers are perceived as morally deficient and therefore untrustworthy, resulting in higher rates of harms commonly associate with stigmatization, including emotional abuse, poor habitus, isolation, depression, and violence. One promising pedagogical approach to counteracting the harmful effects of the immoral nonbeliever stereotype focuses on helping secular communities develop secular, non-dominant, moral capital as a source of confidence and resilience. Drawing on a combination of critical re-storying and moral foundations theory, it is possible to develop a secular moral pedagogy that is philosophically robust, accessible to non-philosophers, and applicable in a wide range of nontraditional learning environments. The ultimate goal of this approach is the development of morally intensive secular communities through value centered community organizing. Secular value centered community organizing faces practical challenges arising from within secular communities and from the broader culture. Within secular communities, there is an ambivalence toward value centered community organizing and any other activity that community members associate with religion. At a societal level, the promotion of secular moral education faces strong headwinds in both liberal public schooling spaces and marginalized communities where the community capital has historically been centered in the church. Given these challenges, it is essential that our approach to secular moral pedagogy include a critical analysis of cultural assumptions endemic in secular spaces that put us at odds with our own goals as secular community educators and organizers. Developing secular, non-dominant moral capital provides nonbelievers with the capacity to resist the immoral nonbeliever stereotype and cope with the costs of being seen as untrustworthy, while avoiding strategies that reproduce harmful and exclusionary assumptions.
Descriptors: Moral Values, Moral Development, Stereotypes, Teaching Methods, Nontraditional Education, Beliefs, Trust (Psychology), Social Bias, Antisocial Behavior, Self Esteem, Resilience (Psychology), Barriers, Coping, Social Attitudes, Religious Factors, Disadvantaged
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1Rutgers University