VALUES CLARIFICATION

Values clarification is a movement that began in the late 1960s as a reaction against the social institutions that were perceived as oppressive regarding personal choice and action among them political and religious structures. To some people it is rooted in Carl Rogers client-based therapy; however, in short it is a process of teaching children about ethics and morality and how to make ethical and moral decisions.

From this perspective it reaches back to Socrates and the Socratic Method as Socrates was a classical humanist. Yes, Socrates begs the wedge phrase "secular humanism" in its classical raiment.

The National Educational Associating became involved in the values clarification movement and produced a book titled, To Nurture Humaneness.  It made the book a building block in its platform that values clarification; that is, the premise that ethics and moral behavior are "value free" by which they meant there are no ethical or moral absolutes, in the curriculum it created to teach values clarification. Thus people are free to choose ethical and moral behavior that resonates with them. The book and ensuing curriculum state that ethics and morality is autonomous and situational needing no theological or ideological sanction for validity. Contrarily, theological and ideological dogma cannot be used to deny personal ethical and moral legitimacy.

This is anathema to the Roman Catholic Church because it is the very definition of "situation ethics" which the Church has always condemned because it makes the entire body of ethical and moral teaching of Church irrelevant. It is also anathema to Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, and other right-wing Christians because they see values clarification as subverting parental authority and biblical teaching of religious beliefs regarding ethical and moral behavior. They complain bitterly that when they try to point out these objections as being both reasonable and valid, they are branded as being bigoted and anti-intellectual.

Values clarification teaches there are three levels of every issue: fact, concept, and value. To illustrate these levels let us consider "evil." On the first level we identify specific evil acts for instance murder. On the second level we consider such questions as, "How do we define murder," and "Is murder always evil?" At the third level we relate facts and concepts e.g., the "values clarification process" to our own life. This is the connection between subject matter and personal behavior.

Thus we now can see that murder, defined as ending the life of a human being, may not always be an evil act. Certainly, murder in defense of one's own life is not an evil act. Neither is murder by accident because by definition for an act to be evil the negative consequence of the act must be intended. Capital punishment may be considered a violation of the 8th amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” in the minds of some people, but is not considered an evil act because the Constitution of the United States does not prohibit it.

The problem for the Roman Catholic Church and conservative right-wing Christians is that this process of "doing" ethics to arrive at a moral decision allows individuals to consider certain acts as moral and not evil when religious dogma and doctrine defines them as morally evil or even intrinsically morally evil. Examples include the Roman Catholic Church’s position that abortion is always an intrinsically moral evil, that homosexuals are "objectively disordered" and consequently homosexual sex acts are always evil, and Evangelicals and other right-wing Christians who define homosexuality as an “abomination” and homosexual sex acts as always evil.

In their convoluted world and religious view, the Roman Catholic Church and conservative Christians claim that the three tiered method of values clarification is far from being "value free." Rather, they claim that it promotes the "value" that whatever decision is reached is morally just and not evil. Consequently, values clarification and its "value free" method create a value of its own that there are no absolute values and this is simply the wolf in sheep's clothing of atheists and secular humanists to destroy the authority of the Church, the Bible, and God as the reasonable and necessary teachers and guardians of what is and is not ethical, moral, and evil. To them, values clarification does this by eliminating the Natural Law, Magesterial teaching, and biblical inerrancy as the only valid agents of determining what behaviors are ethical and moral.

However, what must be understood regarding values clarification is that it is liberating. It is liberating because it facilities personal agency that allows people to determine for themselves, predicated on their informed conscience and not religious dogma or doctrine, what is ethical and moral. Thus values clarification speaks to the deepest regions of what it means to be a human being or in the words of Rudolph Otto “the core of our being.”

For Otto “the core of our being” is found at the level of our soul. It is where the human person meets God. It is that spot where St. Paul teaches us, “He is in us and we are in him.” No church, no religious dogma or doctrine, can presume to be greater than a person’s soul connection with God. That connection is the “still, small, voice” we hear speaking to us that we call conscience and it is by our conscience that we must be governed in all of our ethical and moral decision making and behavior.