moral reform
Virtue-driven social change
Moral reform is organized effort to change society's ethical standards or behaviors, typically by eliminating practices considered sinful or harmful.
The term often refers to 19th-century movements against alcohol, prostitution, and gambling: Moral reform societies sprang up across New England.
It can carry undertones of self-righteousness or imposing one group's values on others.
- abolitionismMovement to end oppression
- legal reformsChanges to laws and regulations
- temperance movementCampaign against alcohol consumption
- civil rights movementOrganized effort against discrimination
- deontologyMorality based on obligations
Charles Finney · Second Great Awakening · suffragette movement · sobriety · clean living · purity pledge · reformer · chastity · fallen women · social gospel · consequentialism · utilitarianism · uplift · crusade · revival · camp meeting · saving souls · sin and redemption
- reformreformer, reformist, democratic reforms, structural change, overhaul
- moral philosophyethics, morals, consequentialism, utilitarianism, deontology
- reform movementsabolitionism, muckraking, social welfare, anti-slavery, feminist literature
- Social Reformabolitionism, prohibition, anti-slavery, temperance, progressive era
- Victorian IdeasVictorianism, Darwinism, social Darwinism, evolution, natural selection
- Victorian reformpoor laws, poorhouse, temperance movement, abolitionists, child labor
moral reformmoral decay
Decline in ethical standards
moral decline · moral corruption · depravity · decadence · dissolution
moral reformlegal reform
Systematic change to laws
political reform · economic reform · institutional reform · regulatory reform · structural change