Emotivism

McIntyre begins by asking why it is that contemporary moral debates (about abortion, war or homosexuality for example) are characterised by their interminablity and by their shrill tone. There never seems to be a resolution in such debates, the various positions within the debates appear to be incommensurable, and this leads to the widely held position in our culture that “all evaluative judgements and more specifically all moral judgements are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling“ - a view McIntyre calls “emotivism.” Emotivists hold that there can be no rational or other grounds for making judgements among rival moral positions, so that all moral debate is essentially an exercise in rhetorical persuasion. So pervasive is this position that “to a large degree people now think, talk and act as if emotivism were true, no matter what their avowed theoretical standpoint may be. Emotivism has become embodied in our culture."

Quoting A MacIntyre's After Virtue in Evangelism after Christendom, Bryan Stone 2007, p132

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Billy Graham (Berlin congress 1966)

I am convinced that if the Church went back to it’s main task of proclaiming the Gospel and getting people converted to Christ, it would have a far greater impact on the social, moral and psychological needs of men than any other thing it could possibly do. Some of the greatest social movements of history have come about as the result of men being converted to Christ.
Read more

Global capitalism as Grand Narrative

Whilst academics have been announcing the advent of 'post-modernity,' and professedly sounding the death knell of all hegemonic 'grand narratives,' global capitalism has insidiously established its power as perhaps the most rapacious grand narrative in the history of the West. Sarah Coakley Powers and Submissions 2002, p14 (intro)
Read more

Modern Evangelism

Salvation in such a [individualistic] world is transformed into and essentially private, one-by-one affair, while evangelism becomes a practice based almost entirely on individual personality and persuasion, an attempt to lead individuals into a private decision to "have a personal relationship with Jesus“ or to join the church, much as one might join any other club or association. The modern Western model of church and salvation, especially in its Protestant forms (which are considerably more "modernised“ than Catholic or Orthodox forms), is largely predicated upon this narrative of the self. The church‘s evangelistic ministry becomes an expression of what McIntyre refers to as “bureaucratic individualism“ and entails the combination of rational technique and strategy, the creation of multiple programs to meet the needs of parishioners who will increasingly come to be viewed as customers or consumers, the tailoring of the gospel message to resonates with people‘s personal ex...
Read more