Scholars have found that in recent years claims for the public good are less often legitimated by religious belief as by “moral esperanto”: a utilitarian, instrumentally rational language devoid of theological meaning. Explanations of why this transformation occurred are made at such a macro-level that they are of limited use to the denominational agencies, special purpose groups, and theologically motivated individuals whose public witness has been affected. I examine the causes of these changes by focusing on one important topic within a family of public good claims called “bioethics”: the prospect of human genetic engineering. Forte past 1½ years, I have conducted research on three fronts. The first is a systematic empirical analysis of human genetic engineering literature from 1958 to 1995. The other two are qualitative analyses of textual and interview data from a government and a United Methodist Church commission that produced texts about human genetic engineering. Preliminary findings suggest it is not only explicitly theological ideas that have become increasingly marginalized, but also entire secular modes of argument-- such as the prophetic and the deontological--which have often been used by religious advocates. This can be explained by the shift from voluntary sector to state institutions as the source of financing and legitimacy for bioethics.