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Religion, ethics and the implications for moral
education: a critique of nucci's morality and religious
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Robert Kunzman a
a Indiana University, USA.

Online Publication Date: 01 September 2003
To cite this Article: Kunzman, Robert (2003) 'Religion, ethics and the implications for
moral education: a critique of nucci's morality and religious rules', Journal of Moral
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Journal of Moral Education, Vol. 32, No. 3, September 2003

Religion, Ethics and the
Implications for Moral Education: a
critique of Nucci’s Morality and
Religious Rules
ROBERT KUNZMAN
Indiana University, USA

ABSTRACT Through a critique of a recent argument by Larry Nucci, this article claims that
for many religious believers, religion and morality cannot be wholly separated. Accordingly,
efforts at moral education that seek to ignore the role of religion in moral judgement will fail to
engage with the realities of many students’ moral frameworks. In contrast to Nucci’s claim that
religion is irrelevant to moral judgement, this essay argues that morality is only weakly
independent from religion. Moral knowledge does not derive exclusively from religious sources,
but none the less involves relevant (and sometimes critical) religious considerations. Accord-
ingly, moral education in American public schools needs curricula that help students explore and
understand various moral rationales and motivations from a variety of cultural sources,
religious and otherwise, providing opportunities for students to engage with difference and
develop the capacity for mutual respect and (when necessary) reasonable disagreement.

Can public schools engage in effective moral education without addressing religious
perspectives? The relationship between moral education and religion in American
public schools has a long history of competing ideologies generating varying curricu-
lar approaches. In this past century, character education’s “search for a civic
religion” (Yulish, 1980), Kohlberg’s cognitive–developmental models inspired by
Kantian ethics and modern character education’s emphasis on Judeo–Christian
virtues have all played an influential role. More recently, work in domain theory
(Turiel, 1983; Nucci, 1996) has provided important insight into the relationship
between moral rules and conventions and established firmly that moral development
is not simply reducible to a cultivation of religious faith. Accordingly, an American
public education intended for and respectful of a diverse mix of religious, agnostic
and atheistic students cannot insist on the exclusive religious grounding that charac-
terised its New England colonial origins. But just as an exclusive connection
between religion and morality cannot be justified, neither can an insistence on their
complete separation, even in the realm of moral education in public schools. In this
article, I contend that a recent argument by Larry Nucci (in his largely impressive

ISSN 0305-7240 print; ISSN 1465-3877 online/03/030251-11
 2003 Journal of Moral Education Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/0305724032000136671



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252 R. Kunzman

Education in the Moral Domain, 2001) advocating a moral education independent of
religious considerations suffers from both empirical and normative weaknesses, and
that such an education fails to engage with the realities of many religious students’
moral frameworks.

As my introductory comments suggest, my intention here is not to defend what
Nucci refers to as the “old and enduring belief that morality and religion are
inseparable” (2001, p. 20; all further quotations from Education in the Moral Domain
unless noted otherwise). Rather, I argue that Nucci’s data do not demonstrate the
opposite extreme, that morality is wholly independent from religion. I also do not
intend to dispute Nucci’s more modest claim that “children and adolescents make
a distinction between the rules and practices specific to their religion, and those
moral issues that ought to be common to religions other than their own and to
secular society as well” (p. 21). Instead, my critique focuses on his significantly more
ambitious conclusion that “even for deeply religious children from fundamentalist or
orthodox backgrounds, morality stems from criteria independent of God’s word” (p.
33; emphasis added). When Nucci claims that morality stems from criteria indepen-
dent of religious sources, I assume that he is referring to our current concept of
morality, rather than offering an evaluation of its historical origins; the historical
interplay between religious sources and the emergence of modern moral sensibilities
seems beyond doubt.

In considering the present relationship between morality and religion, we might
frame the question as whether morality is strongly or weakly independent from
religion. That is, to what extent—if at all—do the moral criteria people employ rely
on religious belief? To illustrate the distinction between strong and weak indepen-
dence, consider the different roles that religious revelation and mathematics play in
scientific procedure. It is generally acknowledged that supermatural revelation and
the scientific method occupy separate magisteria—the premises of one are irrelevant
to the other. In the same way, if religious premises were determined to be strictly
irrelevant to moral issues, we would conclude that morality is strongly independent
from religion. Conversely, mathematics—while not wholly sufficient for science but
often essential—is weakly independent from scientific procedure. Similarly, a claim
that religion is weakly independent from morality means that moral knowledge does
not derive exclusively from religious sources, but none the less involves relevant (and
sometimes critical) religious considerations.

Extending this notion to Nucci’s argument, a strongly independent morality
would either dismiss religious considerations or, as Nucci claims religious children
do, attempt to coordinate religious beliefs to match moral judgement. However,
Nucci’s data and analysis do not demonstrate this strong independence, and
therefore do not refute my contention that, for many religious believers, morality is
only weakly independent from religion. Put another way, many religious believers
rely on their moral judgement as a form of reflection and validation concerning
divine command, but their lives and moral actions are nonetheless shaped directly
by the force of those religious commitments.

My critique of Nucci’s claim—and the ensuing implications he draws for
pedagogy—will focus on two points: the empirical inadequacy of his interview data



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Religion, Ethics and Moral Education 253

analysis and the inconclusiveness of an underlying normative assumption that, for all
people, the moral good exists independent of conceptions of God.

Interviews with Religious Students: establishing a weakly independent

morality

Nucci describes several studies in which groups of children and adolescents (ages
9–17) with fundamentalist religious beliefs (conservative Mennonites, Orthodox
Jews, Conservative Jews and Dutch Reform Calvinists) were interviewed. Structur-
ing this questioning was the domain theory of social development, which distin-
guishes between morality (conceptions of human welfare, justice and rights) and
social convention (behaviour determined by particular social systems) (Turiel,
1983). Murder, for example, would be a moral issue, whereas appropriate attire falls
in the conventional domain. Following this distinction, children were queried
regarding the alterability or universality of religious conventions and moral rules.

While the studies garnered a number of interesting findings, my focus here is on
these religious students’ conception of “moral domain” rules; in the interview
transcripts Nucci provides, the primary examples were stealing and murder. Using
the example of stealing, then, the four anchor questions followed this pattern:

Would it be right/wrong for religious authorities to eliminate rules about
stealing?
If another religion does not have rules about stealing, would it be right/wrong
for them to steal?
If God/Scripture did not say anything about stealing, would it be right/wrong
for you to steal?
If God/Scripture had said you should steal, would it then be right for you to
steal?

Analysis of interview transcripts revealed that over 90% of the children felt moral
transgressions were wrong even for those who had no religious rules governing the
acts. In addition, Nucci claims that “with respect to moral issues, it was apparent
that children had reasons beyond ‘God’s law’ to object to alterations in the
governing rules”, He cites 40% of the Mennonite children’s justifications and 75%
of the Jewish children’s justifications as “focused on the intrinsic features of the acts
as hurtful or unjust” (p. 31). Two comments deserve emphasis here: first, we might
also observe from these percentages that a significant number of rationales were not
based on these intrinsic reasons; secondly, based on the transcripts Nucci provides
the reader, those children who offered these non-religious reasons often did so in
addition to references to God’s law.

The implications here—both concerning what we can claim and what we
cannot—are important. Clearly, some religious students see moral laws as justified
by more than their own religious beliefs, but it would be unwarranted to conclude
(as Nucci does) that the source of moral criteria for these children is entirely
independent of religious belief. The first three questions seek to ascertain whether
moral criteria can be derived in the absence of religious decree. It is vital to note,
however, that the most these questions can reveal is that morality is weakly indepen-



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254 R. Kunzman

dent from religious sources. That is, students are confident in making moral claims
apart from religious authority when the (hypothetical) circumstances involve re-
ligion’s silence—but this reveals little about the relationship between morality and
religion in matters when divine command is clearly present.

A review of the interview transcript reveals the limitations of what Nucci can
claim from students’ answers to the first three questions. In the excerpt with
11-year-old Sam, a conservative Mennonite, he is asked about the wrongness of
stealing. He emphasises repeatedly that God’s law is the source of this universal
prohibition—“because God said that thou shalt not steal and that goes for every-
body”. Sam is then posed the hypothetical question, “If God hadn’t said anything
about stealing one way or the other, would it be okay to steal then?” to which he
responds in the negative (pp. 35–36). This suggests that Sam is able to draw on
moral criteria beyond God’s word, but because the hypothetical momentarily denies
the role of religious influence, we are unable to draw any conclusion about the
influence that Sam’s moral intuition would have relative to divine command.

Nucci claims that “each child employed evidence from his and her own
personal experience as a touchstone from which to evaluate these moral transgres-
sions” (p. 39), but I would suggest that many of these children probably used their
personal experience as a validation of the moral principle they had learned from their
religion, rather than as the sole source of that principle. Nucci, of course, interprets
this process of reflective equilibrium differently. He perceives “an attempt by
children to coordinate their notion of the just Judeo–Christian God with what they
know to be morally right” (pp. 46–47, original emphasis), depicting conceptions of
God as wholly dependent on freestanding moral knowledge, rather than a more
complex interrelationship. Nucci sees the religious justifications as merely initial
justifications that are then superseded by a foundational justification rooted in a
universal moral core; but the most Nucci’s research can demonstrate is that there is
sometimes more to these students’ justifications besides their initial religious ones.
As Jeffrey Stout (1988) points out, someone could grant that God’s will is not the
sole fundamental criterion, “but it does not follow from this admission that a
criterion connecting moral goodness or obligation to God’s will is less fundamental
than many (or even most) of our moral judgments. So there may still be a strong
sense in which God’s will belongs to the foundation of morality—the level of criteria
on which the bulk of moral judgments depend for their justification” (p. 116). A
rational desire to have one’s faith resonate with one’s moral intuitions does not
necessarily mean that the former is dictated by the latter. At the very least, the
interview data provide no conclusive answer.

“That Changes the Whole Thing”: an incoherent hypothetical question

It is the fourth question listed above, however, that aims to establish the existence
of moral criteria strongly independent from religion. Here, instead of exploring the
role of moral intuition in the absence of clear religious criteria, a diametric conflict
between the two is presented. Rather than simply stipulating that God/Scripture has
nothing to say about a moral wrong, interviewers ask children to suppose that God



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Religion, Ethics and Moral Education 255

commands exactly the opposite—“Suppose that God said that we should murder?”
This question fails to reveal what Nucci claims. Within the three major theistic
traditions of Islam, Judaism and Christianity, a standard conception of the nature of
God exists whereby God is by definition perfectly good; it is, in other words, the very
essence of God’s being. This foundational concept of an omnibenevolent God
(Swinburne, 1993) means that Nucci’s hypothetical construct essentially requires
students to imagine that their God does not exist, which defeats the intent of forcing
a judgement about moral goodness in opposition to divine command.

Understandably, then, the religious students’ responses to this fourth question
are ambiguous. Nucci seems to suggest that such responses indicate either under-
developed or incoherent reasoning. In his commentary on the interview with
10-year-old Cathy, he notes that she takes “two seemingly contradictory positions”:
stealing is wrong because it hurts people, but if God said it was acceptable, then it
would be. He then admits, “We cannot conclude whether such reasoning is a
function of developmental level or if it simply reflects an alternative mode of
conceptualising the relationship between morality and God’s word” (p. 48). It is not
clear whether Nucci assumes the second possibility to be incoherent; if not, then this
alternative conceptualisation deserves further consideration as an example of an
intertwined relationship between morality and religion, the very scenario Nucci
seeks to deny. More likely, Nucci assumes Cathy’s conceptual framework is incoher-
ent. It is the assumed contradiction of this alternative conceptualisation that I wish
to question; the next section of this essay will suggest reasonable philosophical
explanations for such alternative positions.

The interview with 17-year-old Faith also prompts Nucci to address the
possibility of a more complex relationship between religious and moral conviction.
Faith appeals to God as a higher law than moral judgement, while expressing
discomfort with the character of a hypothetical God who would command theft and
murder. Nucci observes that:

Faith’s thinking nicely illustrates how a deep conviction and faith in God’s
goodness, coordinated with a belief in God’s omniscience, can lead a
person to accept conclusions about the moral rectitude of actions com-
manded by God that run counter to the person’s own intuitions about the
actions. The reasoning of such individuals, however, is not structured by
an unreflective acceptance of God’s authority. On the contrary, the notions
of God’s moral authority, held by the participants in this study, stemmed
from their assumptions about the inherent goodness of the Judeo–Christian
God (pp. 49–50).

But Nucci’s next sentence seems to miss the point: “Should that assumption be
challenged, then God’s authority in moral matters would be called into question” (p.
50). This claim would be more accurately and revealingly phrased, “If we require
children to abandon that assumption [of God’s inherent goodness], then God’s
authority in moral matters would be called into question.” As noted previously, it is
the conviction of God’s goodness that grounds the entire belief framework of many
religious children; to “assume” that away is to create an imaginary scenario that tells



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256 R. Kunzman

us very little about the relationship between religious and moral belief in the actual
lives of believers, and thus has little to offer in formulating a singular approach to
public moral education. The final exchange between Faith and her interviewer
makes this abundantly clear:

I: So, if He were a different kind of God, would it be all right to do it—to
kill?

F: Well, I don’t know. That changes the whole thing. So, I don’t know.

Nucci’s hypothetical construct does indeed change the whole thing. I am therefore
deeply sceptical of his claim in the very next sentence: “In summary, there was clear
evidence in this study that Christian and Jewish children evaluate moral issues on
the basis of criteria independent of the word of God” (p. 50). No such strong
independence is demonstrated. In fact, for many of these children, the relationship
between God and moral goods appears deeply intertwined.

In summary, Nucci’s data suggest the existence of a morality that is weakly
autonomous from religion. His argument for a stronger independence, however,
proves unconvincing. The likelihood of a more complex relationship between
morality and religion for many people remains. The next section sketches a philo-
sophical description of such a relationship and thus throws into doubt normative
claims that insist on morality’s strong independence from religion for all people. The
final section then suggests implications for moral education in public schools if
Nucci’s claims are unsubstantiated.

Divine Command and Moral Reflection: unresolved complexity

The question is at least as old as Plato’s Euthyphro, where Socrates explores the
gods’ relationship to moral obligations: are they obligatory because the gods com-
mand them, or do the gods command them because the obligations exist in and of
themselves? These are the philosophical roots of Nucci’s claims for a clear separ-
ation between religion and morality. Nucci contends that the one source or sustain-
ing element of morality is secular considerations of right and wrong, and that a
coherent morality does not include the idea of God’s commands. Religious consid-
erations, therefore, are irrelevant when it comes to moral judgement. Nucci cites
Nielsen’s (1973) argument that, at least for a Judeo–Christian framework, moral
goods must be prior to and independent of God. My intent here is not to show that
Nielsen’s contention must fail, but rather that other reasonable philosophical argu-
ments can be made that describe a more complex interrelationship between God
and moral goods. If this proves convincing, we have further indication that a moral
education stripped of religious considerations probably does not provide a
sufficiently diverse picture of the moral life.

The interview question, “What if God said that you should murder?” involves a
divine command at odds with our strong moral intuition that murder is wrong. In
relation to this question, Nucci alludes to a story from the Jewish and Christian
Scriptures that serves as perhaps the most prominent example of divine command



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Religion, Ethics and Moral Education 257

seemingly at odds with moral intuition: the story of Abraham and Isaac. Described
briefly, God tells Abraham that he must sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering.
Abraham proceeds to obey God’s command and when he raises his knife to kill
Isaac, God intervenes and provides a ram as a sacrificial substitute. The children’s
understandable discomfort in defending a divine command to murder (or steal, hit
other children, etc.) stems from their own moral intuition that such things are
wrong. Nucci sees this as a rejection of morality determined by divine command and
an effort to “coordinate their notion of the just Judeo–Christian God with what they
know to be morally right” (pp. 46–47). By contrast, I suspect that the conflicted
responses of some of these children do not represent a rejection of divine command
morality as much as a lack of philosophical language to express such complexity.
What follows is a brief sketch of a philosophical attempt to give fuller expression to
the issues these children struggle to articulate in the interviews.

One common element of theistic belief mentioned earlier that children would
probably have difficulty defending from philosophical objection is God’s om-
nibenevolence. A sceptic might question this foundational principle by pointing to
historical examples where original divine command has apparently been superseded
by new revelation—if God is always good, how could divine moral commands have
shifted so drastically? A prime example of this in the Christian tradition involves the
Old Testament command of “an eye for an eye” (Exodus 21:24) which is altered by
Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount to “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:38–48). In
such an instance, theologians often appeal to the notion of progressive revelation,
the idea that God’s commands address our current moral capacity and are intended
to bring us along closer and closer to God’s full moral goodness. In this particular
example, the Old Testament admonition of “an eye for an eye” was a tempering of
previous practice in which transgressions were responded to with increasing escala-
tion (for example, Genesis 4:24). While the theology of progressive revelation is far
from indisputable, conceiving of moral reflection as a reciprocal relationship be-
tween historically evolving revelation and the growth of moral understanding from
secular sources is certainly a defensible philosophical position. Recognising it as such
helps explain why many religious students (whose moral judgements likely reflect
this relationship) found the either/or choice demanded in Nucci’s fourth question to
be incoherent.

Theonomy: a dialectic of religion and morality

The philosopher Robert Adams (1987) offers a balanced approach to the tension
between moral autonomy and religious heteronomy, arguing instead for theonomy,
a term borrowed from Paul Tillich. Adams writes, “Let us say that a person is
theonomous to the extent that the following is true of him: he regards his moral
principles as given him by God, and adheres to them partly out of love or loyalty to
God, but he also prizes them for their own sakes, so that they are the principles he
would give himself if he were giving himself a moral law” (p. 126).

Here Nucci might respond that if divine law and human morality are the same,
then we have escaped the need to deal directly with religious doctrine in the moral



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258 R. Kunzman

sphere. In fact, part of his concluding claim is that since “basic moral concerns are
shared across the range of human societies and groups … this means that there can
be moral education compatible with, and yet independent from, religious moral
doctrine” (p. 51). But this response overestimates the congruence between the two,
and more importantly, underestimates the extent to which religious belief can
influence broader concepts of human flourishing, which in turn affect one’s judge-
ments of others’ interests. As Eamonn Callan (1989) points out, “If I had faith, my
relationship to God would not just be added to my existing scheme of values, like
a new interest in stamp-collecting, say, which governs choice only within a segment
of life I assign to the interest. The life of faith is driven by devotion to God, which
means that embracing it would oblige me to think altogether differently about what
matters in my life and the lives of others” (p. 273).

One theological manifestation of this view is forwarded by Stanley Hauerwas
(1981), whose notion of “narrative ethics” maintains that moral principles only
make sense within a broader conception of virtuous human life (a view argued in
philosophical terms by Alasdair MacIntyre and others). At the same time, Hauerwas
does not seek to privilege teleological ethics over deontological principles. Rather,
the religious notion of the good life informs a range of possible moral choices, as I
suggest Nucci’s interviewees are doing in seeking reflective equilibrium between
their religious beliefs and moral judgements.

A theonomous believer, then, while probably sharing many basic values in
common with the non-religious, will also probably have moral sources that shape
aspects of moral life in significantly different ways. Many Christians, for instance,
share with broader society the pragmatic view that forgiveness is an important step
toward reconciliation in human relationships, but also believe deeply that they are
required to forgive because God through Christ has forgiven them. Even if the
eventual actions associated with certain moral virtues end up being similar, an
approach to moral education that only allows for consideration of secular rationales
will not connect with the motivations of many religious believers. For instance, the
common religious belief that humans are precious children of God, perhaps even
made in God’s image, is a powerful motivation for believers to treat others with love
and respect. While various secular arguments for the dignity of all people might also
inform believers, such arguments will probably prove to be a secondary motivation
for them. Even though many religious believers will accept a variety of secular moral
sources, they will arguably do so through a process of reflective equilibrium with
religious beliefs.

The possibility that emerges here is a dialectic of sorts between divine command
and moral reflection. Basil Mitchell (1980) criticises the type of dualism Nucci
poses, pointing out that “it is one thing to hold that religious belief may profoundly
affect a man’s belief as to how he should live, and why he should live that way, and
another to claim that morality must be wholly based upon considerations which are
specifically religious” (p. 147). It need not be an either/or decision. As Callan (1989)
argues, a rational morality necessitates at least some moral reflection about divine
command, but does not invalidate the influence of religious belief in moral judge-
ment. He writes, “In ascribing goodness to God’s will theists may have to admit that



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Religion, Ethics and Moral Education 259

they employ some non-religious understanding of moral goodness, and that ad-
mission is tantamount to saying that morality is at least weakly autonomous vis-à-vis
religion. But all this is entirely consistent with the possibility of a clear deductive
path from claims about what God commands to conclusions about what we ought
to do” (p. 270). The exact nature of such a reflective process may differ from
believer to believer, but its reasonable existence suggests that a process of moral
education that rejects such a possibility outright will not speak to many religious
believers.

To re-emphasise, my purpose in this brief philosophical foray has not been to
show that indisputable philosophical proof exists for the connection between moral-
ity and religion. Rather, the question is still very much in dispute in the field, and
the philosophical perspective I just sketched is recognised widely as one of several
reasonable competitors. To the extent that such reasonable yet conflicting argu-
ments exist, we should resist accepting normative claims about the disconnection
between morality and religion as settled matters.

Morality and Religion: educational implications for a complex relationship

On the surface, at least, many of these religious students sought to make God the
beginning and end of their moral framework, but their responses to Nucci’s
questions reveal that weakly independent moral judgement is also at work. Never-
theless, reliance on religious decree for moral judgements is still vital to the overall
moral frameworks of many students. The existence of weakly independent moral
judgement and its distinct moral criteria, while important to recognise, tells us little
about how religious believers actually function in the moral world.

My point here has certainly not been that moral education in public schools
should teach that divine command is an adequate sole justification for morality, but
neither should it discount or dismiss the role of divine command in the moral
frameworks of students and society. Even more important, it is vital to note that the
question of religion’s role in moral education ought to extend well beyond Nucci’s
consideration of divine command. Many religious traditions—even among Islam,
Judaism and Christianity—derive moral influence from sources other than divine
command [1]. Nucci’s focus on divine command examines one element of religious
belief; it should not be used as a sole basis for broader conclusions about religion’s
proper role in moral education.

Nucci contends that his research supports “a more constrained use of moral
language” when addressing the universal “moral core” in American public schools.
However, if, contra Nucci, religion and morality cannot be clearly separated in the
lives of religious believers, where does that leave efforts toward moral education in
public schools? In the introduction to his argument, Nucci alludes to “the particular
legal dilemma of teaching about morality without, at the same time, violating First
Amendment freedoms and constitutional provisions regarding the separation of
church and state” (p. 20). This legal principle of separation, however, need not
preclude the consideration of religious influences on moral matters. The First
Amendment Center, a non-partisan foundation which advocates a legally sensitive



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260 R. Kunzman

inclusion of learning about religion in the public school curriculum (and has been
deeply involved in the development of consensus documents, such as the Williams-
burg Charter cited below) affirms as much in their publication Finding Common
Ground: “Public schools may teach about the various religious and nonreligious
perspectives concerning the many complex moral issues confronting society, but
such perspectives must be presented without adopting, sponsoring or denigrating
one view against another” (p. 102). Curricula that help students explore and
understand various moral rationales and motivations from a variety of cultural
sources, religious and otherwise, provide the opportunity for students to engage with
difference and develop the capacity for mutual respect and (when necessary)
reasonable disagreement.

Such curricula are vital in public schools. Ideologically diverse groups have
sponsored various consensus statements on the role of religion in public life,
including education. One such effort, the Williamsburg Charter (1988), affirmed
that:

Too often in recent disputes over religion and public affairs, some have
insisted that any evidence of religious influence on public policy represents
an establishment of religion and is therefore precluded as an improper
“imposition.” Such exclusion of religion from public life is historically
unwarranted, philosophically inconsistent and profoundly undemocratic
(p. 257) [2].

The clear belief is expressed here that citizens should engage respectfully with the
diversity of religious beliefs, moral and otherwise; but to expect this of citizens who
have not had the opportunity to develop these skills and virtues in the public
educational realm seems unrealistic.

More fundamentally, recognising the intertwined relationship between religion
and morality also suggests the need for a fuller conception of moral education, one
that includes the broader notion of “ethics” as the ancient Greeks defined it. This
included not only a focus on moral obligation, but also a concern for what makes a
full and meaningful life. So whereas much modern civic and character education is
concerned primarily with our responsibilities toward others, ethical education would
also involve broader questions about the good life and human flourishing. Lawrence
Walker (2002) advocates this broader concern for “moral identity” when he con-
tends, “Morality is also an intrapersonal enterprise because it is integral to the
how-shall-we-then-live existential question—it involves basic values, lifestyle, and
identity” (p. 66). As more than morality-as-obligation, ethical education would be
an endeavour of even greater complexity, but one with much deeper resonance with
students’ lives.

In the conclusion to his argument, Nucci contends that there is “considerable
common ground on which deeply religious people from different religious perspec-
tives, along with nonreligious people, can come to terms regarding the central
concerns of their children’s moral development” (p. 510). I certainly agree, but
cultivating this common ground does not depend on the wholesale exclusion of
religious perspectives and how they inform ethical beliefs. In fact, as I have argued,



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Religion, Ethics and Moral Education 261

such exclusion will hinder educational efforts to engage students with ethical
complexities as they play out in their lives and the society in which they live. I concur
with Nucci’s call for “tolerance based on the moral principles of mutual respect and
fairness” (p. 510), but such respect calls for efforts to understand the moral and
ethical motivations of others, and these sources will often be religious.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Eamonn Callan, the MCS group at Stanford, and an anonymous JME
reviewer for their insightful comments on this essay.

Correspondence: Dr Robert Kunzman, Assistant Professor, Department of Curricu-
lum and Instruction, School of Education, Indiana University, W.W. Wright Edu-
cation Building, 201 North Rose Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405–1006, USA; Tel:
812 856 8122; Fax: 812 856 8116; E-mail: rkunzman@indiana.edu

NOTES

[1] For examples, see John Stratton Hawley’s (1987) Saints and Virtues.
[2] Signatories included not only religious representatives but also leaders of groups such as People for

the American Way and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, as well as educa-
tional groups such as the American Federation of Teachers and the National School Boards
Association.

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HAUERWAS, S. (1981) A Community of Character (Notre Dame, IN, University of Notre Dame Press).
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