Most Americans today have never heard of Joseph Fletcher, but his moral legacy lives within us every day.
Every time we make a moral decision and reference “circumstances” rather than moral absolutes, we are channeling Fletcher. Every weak pastor who tones down his message so as not to offend some of his congregation is echoing Fletcher. Every politician who goes against his conscience to toe the “party line” is following Fletcher’s doctrines. Every social media titan who de-platforms those he disagrees with “for the greater good” is acting out Fletcher’s corrupt philosophy.
Fletcher was one of the leading American Protestant theologians of the 20th century. His concept of “situation ethics”—a moral philosophy whereby one’s ethics must be adjusted to suit the circumstances—has transformed the United States’ religious, cultural, and political values.
Fletcher wrote over 250 articles, monographs, and reviews, plus 11 books—the most famous and influential being “Situation Ethics: The New Morality.”
In “Situation Ethics,” Fletcher argued that all fixed or revealed laws of morality must be discarded in favor of whatever actions seemed most “loving” in a given situation.
Fletcher’s book was perfectly timed to exploit the spiritual vacuum of the times. Post-war affluence, coupled with the “let ‘em roam wild” parenting theories of leftist pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock and the free love doctrines popularized by professor Herbert Marcuse and his Marxist “Frankfurt School” colleagues, had rocked America’s traditional foundations. American Christianity was in full retreat.
After the passing of the Johnson amendment to the U.S. tax code in 1954, which threatened churches with loss of tax-free status if they endorsed political candidates, thousands of cowardly pastors took the tax exemption in return for abandoning the moral leadership of their communities. In 1962 and 1963, prayer was taken out of public schools. The old morality was dying. America was ready for something new. Fletcher supplied it.
“Although other scholars attacked situation ethics as either dangerous or too vague to resolve difficult moral conflicts, Dr. Fletcher’s argument resonated widely in a decade marked by discontent with conventions and established authorities.”
“Joseph Fletcher ranks among the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. Fletcher, an Episcopalian priest who became an atheist in later life, is best known for his book ‘Situation Ethics: The New Morality.’ First published in 1966, the book cemented Fletcher’s standing as one of the founders of the system known as situational ethics.
The traditional concept of justice and personal accountability was also redundant: “Love and justice are the same, for justice is love distributed.”
And who got to define what is “love” or “loving”? You did, of course. According to Fletcher, morality was now a personal decision. Absent was revealed moral standards from the Bible or the Torah. “If it feels good, do it” or “what’s right for you, may not be right for me” became the new moral guidelines for millions of Americans.
Fletcher certainly helped to advance the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s.
“An Episcopal theologian said Thursday premarital sex relations between consenting, intelligent individuals should not be condemned.
“Dr. Joseph Fletcher also told a seminar on population policy at the University of North Carolina that colleges and universities should provide information on birth control and actual contraceptive care for those who request it. …
Fletcher’s Christianity
Fletcher’s Christianity is highly suspect. Certainly, Fletcher had little respect for the Church that paid his salary and gave his views respectability and credibility.After leaving academia, Fletcher declared himself an atheist and became active in the American Euthanasia Association and the Association for Voluntary Sterilization. This anti-life activism was a family affair. Fletcher’s wife, Forrest Hatfield, had worked closely with Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, who was once well known for her eugenicist and racial supremacist views.
There is much more compelling evidence that Fletcher was only briefly a genuine Christian. He was, in reality, a lifelong Marxist revolutionary.
As a young man, Fletcher attended Berkeley Divinity School in Northern California. Even then, socialism was rampant in many Protestant divinity schools. In the summer of his first year, Fletcher enrolled in a program called “Seminarians in Industry.”
“His last year at seminary was spent collaborating on a book with [socialist] Spencer Miller, education adviser to the [communist-infiltrated] American Federation of Labor, titled ‘The Church and Industry’ (1931). After completing divinity school in 1928, Fletcher pursued graduate studies in economic history at Yale.”
In 1930, he went to London to study under “Christian socialist” R. H. Tawney at the left-leaning London School of Economics.
Returning to the United States at the height of the Great Depression, Fletcher continued his union activism and teaching as dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Cincinnati. There, he developed a school of “social training” for seminarians. Fletcher “taught courses in labor history and New Testament at the University of Cincinnati and social ethics at Hebrew Union College,” according to YourDictionary.com. He also “taught volunteer courses in a labor education night school supported by local unions.”
After moving to Harvard, Fletcher became involved in serious international communist activity.
“Mr. KUNZIG [counsel]: Mr. Philbrick, seeing as we are here in executive session, and this testimony being confidential, do you feel you could tell the committee the names of these ministers in the Boston area whom you, as you said, have a pretty good idea were the ones that you feel were the members of the Communist Party? … Then could you give us for the record in executive session here this afternoon these names to which you have referred?
“Mr. PHILBRICK: Yes, I could … The Reverend Joseph Fletcher, F-l-e-t-c-h-e-r, of the theological seminary, Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Mass., is another. Joe Fletcher worked with us on Communist Party projects and on enormous number of tasks.
“Mr. CLARDY [committee member]: He is still there?
Cox was an avowed socialist who would go on to be a longtime leader of the Democratic Socialists of America Religious and Socialism Commission.
Fletcher damaged the United States’ moral underpinnings almost beyond repair. Was Fletcher’s “situation ethics” the fruit of a sincere but badly errant Christian academic?
Or was it the work of a committed atheist Stalinist aiming to overturn Judeo-Christian ethics in service of the world revolutionary movement?
Revolution by definition is the overturning of the natural hierarchies of life. If morality comes from God, it can’t be changed by man. This principle has reined in man’s baser instincts for thousands of years.
If revolutionaries such as Fletcher can succeed in overthrowing the divine roots of morality, widespread depravity becomes inevitable. Depravity and chaos create a devil’s playground. The communist revolutionary is evil’s most valuable servant.
Fletcher had a major influence on American Christianity and the wider culture.
He was very seldom on the side of the angels.
