I'm curious: you don't see moral or righteous indignation as connected to religion?
As I mentioned earlier, I think religious people would be more likely to use the word, righteous, and secular people would be more likely to use the word, moral, but they would be meaning essentially the same thing. To the extent that morals come from religion, then indignation would have a religious base. Some indignation might be specifically religious in the sense that the holier-than-thou types might look down on the non-religious or the differently religious or the insufficiently religious, aka sinners. But it seems mostly a "lowly them" and a "superior us" thing to me, specifically a need to differentiate between them and us or a reaction to be treated as a them rather than as an us.
This sounds like a bad 1950's era movie
More likely a 40's movie, which may be where my early impressions of the term came from. I agree that the caricature was common.
Not long ago I reported here on an experience I had on jury duty perhaps ten years ago. One juror was determined that the defendant was guilty of attempted auto theft largely because the event occurred near midnight. I read his expression as indignation. He judged that decent people weren't out and about at that hour, ergo, anyone out then was morally inferior and a likely car thief. You could practically see his nose go up in the air as he spoke. That's my model for righteous or moral indignation. To what extent he indicated that his POV was based on religion, I don't recall. Had there been a strong indicator, I would probably have remembered it. I had occasion to see a lot of indignation while serving on juries. It must be a pretty common reaction. |
