Ross gets feisty:

In fact, I think Andrew lets Bush off too easily when he says “as a very abstract theological principle, it’s hard for a fellow Christian to disagree” with the President’s contention that “a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom.” On the one hand, there’s nothing “abstract” about that particular Christian principle: The gift of freedom that Christ promises is far more real than anything else in this world, if Christian teaching on the matter is correct. On the other hand, there’s nothing that’s political about that promise, and the attempt to transform God’s promise of freedom through Jesus Christ into a this-world promise of universal democracy is the worst kind of “immanentizing the eschaton” utopian bullshit.

Naturally, I couldn’t agree with Ross’ response to these items more, and I have objected to this Bushian-Gersonian liberation theology last year and again in a different form in my column (not online) in the July 16 TAC.  It is exceedingly easy for a Christian to disagree with Mr. Bush’s “theological perspective,” especially when that perspective seems to require spreading the good news of liberty by way of airstrikes and invasions.  It is amazing how much mischief results when you try to square Christian revelation with often antithetical revolutionary principles. 

Immanentist ideologies and substitute religions stand in opposition to the Gospel.  Compared to the liberation from sin and death that Christ has accomplished, how insignificant is political liberty!  This does not mean that the latter is itself undesirable, but that it is hardly the chief priority of God’s salvific plan for man, and it is precisely for the salvation of men from sin and death and not their amelioration of their political status that God became man.  I can think of no worse kind of militant quasi-religiosity than the sort that preaches secular revolution, actively works in such a way as to worsen the situation of the militant’s own co-religionists and justifies the bloodletting that follows by saying, “Deus vult!”