I’m a pretty big fan of Mister Rogers. I remember watching Mister Rogers' Neighborhood growing up, and his kind and reassuring voice always resonated with me. He was, in many ways, a role model. After my parents' divorce, the world felt a bit topsy-turvy, but there was a consistent kindness that came from Mister Rogers. Over the years, as I grew into an adult, I learned that Mister Rogers was a Presbyterian minister (hey, me too!) and also the kind of guy who would get into “good trouble.” This gentle and kind man was anything but timid or weak.

One of my favorite stories about Mister Rogers took place during the push for Civil Rights for Black Americans, when many pools were segregated. There was this strange belief that Black and white people couldn’t be in the same water, or something bad would happen to the white people. White people were even afraid to use the same water fountains. So, one day on his television show, Mister Rogers and his local police officer, Francois Clemmons (who was Black), shed their shoes and socks and soaked their feet together in a small wading pool. This simple act sent shockwaves and deeply challenged many existing social norms. Many people were disgusted by it.

Sanctity/Degradation: A Moral Foundation

The response of “disgust” highlights our next moral foundation: sanctity/degradation. In the early stages of human development, it was imperative for our survival as a species that we developed a strong sense of sanctity/degradation. If people kept trying to eat rotting meat or their feces, they wouldn’t have survived. So, we began to categorize some things as clean and some as unclean. As humanity developed medicines and technology to cook and store food properly, this moral foundation didn’t simply disappear. Instead, it latched onto ideas and ideologies.

One of my favorite scenes in the Bible is the story of Cornelius and Peter. This is the famous account where Peter goes into a trance and sees a sheet of “unclean” animals dropped from heaven, commanded by God to “rise, kill, and eat.” Peter, being a godly Jewish man, declines, as he has never eaten unclean food. Then, he goes on to meet Cornelius, and it strikes him that God was revealing that while people might see Gentiles as unclean, God has declared them clean. The ramifications of this are felt throughout the rest of the Book of Acts.

Sanctity/degradation as a moral foundation is the building block for some very important virtues in our lives, such as chastity, piety, cleanliness, and temperance. I think most of us would agree that these are important for people to incorporate into their lives. In every parent’s life, there comes a day when you have to ensure your child wears deodorant. In American culture, there’s a strong aversion to the smell of body odor; we find it to be a sign of someone being unclean.

This moral foundation drives people together and bonds them over their revulsion of something they consider to be unclean or taboo. For instance, Mormons and Baptists are often deeply bonded over their pro-life stance. In other areas, they may disagree vehemently, but their shared revulsion of abortion bonds them together. In the same way, devout Muslims and the LGBTQ community may be bonded together through their revulsion of various Republican stances they deem to hurt minority populations. Again, while they may hold wildly disparate views on many things, their shared disgust bonds them together.

The sanctity/degradation moral foundation opens the door for people to understand certain ideas or people as being clean and unclean. The clean is to be embraced, the unclean to be destroyed.

When I find myself in conversation with someone who holds disparate sanctity/degradation positions from my own, I find it really difficult to cross that divide. I have a lot of work to do in growing in this area. I wonder, how do you deal with it? Do you feel like you’re able to cross this divide?