Spirit Baptism as a Moral Source in a Secular Age

Abstract

Abstract Charles Taylor notes that moderns aspire to high moral standards, such as universal justice and benevolence, but lack the moral resources necessary to fulfill these standards. Instead, the weak motivations of egoism, guilt, and obligation result in hypocrisy or the projection of blame on others when we fail to meet these ideals. Taylor’s work seeks to uncover deep moral sources, such as agape, that make it possible to fulfill these standards. This article will complement Taylor’s excavation of powerful moral resources by arguing that Spirit baptism, understood as intense participation in divine love, is a retrieval of agape as an empowering moral source as well as a way to contact this source through spiritual articulation. It is a particular kind of retrieval that resonates with the modern sense of the self through a language of personal resonance and an elevation of the ordinary person into the extraordinary life.