A “safe” morality is not bad in itself, but this kind of safety has come at a cost. In the effort to establish a neutral and inclusive paradigm of formation, moral cosmologies are lifted out of particular cultural and linguistic contexts, detached from the social practices by which they are communally reinforced, and disconnected from the historical narratives that give them weight and significance. Emptied of these particu-larities, lived moralities lose the very qualities by which they could become coherent to people and binding upon them. The moral is reduced to the thinnest of platitudes.
A morality conceptualized without basic links to a living creed and a lived community imposes few if any moral demands or obligations (such as telling the truth or sharing some of one’s wealth with others), and therefore has few psychic consequences (whether remorse, guilt, or shame—or, conversely, pride in having done the right thing). What you end up with may be politically uncontroversial, but it will add little or nothing to the moral fortitude of the individual.