If you’re the arbiter of what the liberal bargain means, then I want no part of it. The American experiment has succeeded for so long precisely because it doesn’t force its citizens channel their “theological passions and certainties … out of public life and into the private sphere.” It forces them to play by a certain set of political rules, yes, which prevent those passions and certainties from creating a religious tyranny. But it doesn’t make the mistake of telling people that their deepest beliefs should be irrelevant to how they vote, or what causes they support. The kind of secularism that you’re promoting–and that Neuhaus and the rest of the “theocons” were originally reacting against–is an attempt to change those rules and impose greater restrictions on religious Americans than have heretofore existed. This isn’t just blinkered, unfair, and contrary to the actual American tradition of how religion and politics interact; it’s also dangerous to liberalism, because it vindicates those people–Christians and secularists alike–who have always said that faith and liberalism aren’t compatible and that everyone need to choose between Christ and the republic, between God and Caesar. And, if you force Americans to make that choice, I’m not sure you’ll be happy with the results. ~Ross Douthat

Ross’ second installment at TNR in his theocon debate with Damon Linker, whose first installment is here, knocks down the fairly weak ripostes that Linker had offered and then proceeds to grind them into the ground.  At least for the most part.  The more I think about it, the less I am persuaded by the basic theocon claim that a liberalism that  cannot be informed by religious, and particularly Christian, ideas is in danger of failing.  I am even less persuaded that liberalism will be endangered because secularism will end up empowering those voices on both sides (like mine?) that preach hostility between the Faith and liberalism. 

If empowering people like me (and whoever my opposite number among the secularists might be) is the great danger to liberalism posed by Linker’s secularist overreaching, Linker can probably sleep soundly, since 50 years (at least) of secularist overreaching has typically empowered precisely those religious conservatives who keep insisting on what good liberals they are, how much they want to play by the rules and how important they are to liberalism’s survival.  As Ross knows, American Christians are perfectly content with the liberal order (though they will object to a thousand and one policies or legal rulings within that order), because it is the only kind they have ever known and indeed the more intensely Christian Americans are the more they (typically) invest the American system of government and political culture with quasi-religious significance.  Actual anti-liberal Christians are as rare as gold in this country, not least because so many Christians have persuaded themselves that America is a “Christian country,” and not just in a historical-cultural sense, which causes them to intellectually bend themselves into pretzels to demonstrate the religious origins of the Union.  The “Christian country” spiel is just the “proposition nation” claim for people who go to church, and is just about as substantial, but it is very effective in keeping people on board with the project. 

American Christians have seen Christianity excluded from the public square more and more each decade, and have mustered by and large limited resistance to this trend.  Who now fights for prayer in school–not a minute of silence, not “one nation under God” hokum, but actual prayer?  To ask the question is to acknowledge the extent of the defeat.  In fact, you would be fairly hard-pressed to find a religious conservative today who would lament this development in print.  Unlike Christians in fights with liberalism in Europe–which the liberals tended to lose in the early decades when they provoked the Christians about vital issues pertaining to education or social policy–American Christians are locked into some form of liberalism and, through the work of theocons, have developed an entire argument for why they are basically not only in harmony with this liberalism but are the essential protectors of it.  

They cannot mount an effective counterattack on the ravages of secularism, because they are so committed to the procedural rules of the game to which they constantly appeal in arguments with secularists, while the secularists have no scruples about altering the political and legal landscape through ever-more outrageous and preposterous readings of the law.  Each time they change the rules, religious conservatives cry foul but then set about convincing themselves that they must abide by the new rules.  If this is the backlash against secularism and liberalism, I would hate to see what accommodation looks like.  More to the point, if this is what has resulted from half a century of galloping secularism, the secularists have nothing to fear from any more serious backlash in the future.  Seen this way, the theocons are certainly not laying siege to secular America, which appears here as an entirely ludicrous claim, but might as well be opening the gates to the secularists with their half-hearted, “We’re Christians, but we love liberalism!” defense.

Ross’ final remark is a kind of appeal to the mob, in which the religious conservative warns the secularist that if he does not grant religious folks full participation under the rules of the game then the religious folks might just start listening to the Thomas Muentzers of the world and decide that they absolutely prefer Christ to the Republic (on the whole, I suspect Christians do prefer Christ to the Republic, but not to the necessary exclusion or detriment of the latter).  In other words, talking about theocons besieging secular America is crazy, alarmist talk…for the moment.  As I read this, Ross seems to be saying that the Neuhausian detente with liberalism and the involvement of religious Americans in politics more generally help to prevent a religious majority from rising up and destroying a secular liberal order, which they might otherwise do if this happy middle ground broke down.  Religious Americans are good liberals, unless you push them too far, so Linker would be advised not to do too much pushing.  That doesn’t seem likely to set the secularist at ease about the potential threat that he sees.

This seems to be an odd way to end an otherwise compelling argument.  Perhaps the spectre of a more extreme religious politics would make the mild-mannered theocons seem less terrifying and would convince Linker that it could be a lot worse than Neuhaus et al. and he could learn to live with them, “religiously informed public philosophy” and all.  Yet it is odd that Ross ends his contribution by playing on the very irrational fears of religious politics that he has spent the entire debate dismissing as, well, irrational and unfounded.          

By the way, Michael also gets into the mix this morning and makes a particularly good observation:

Linker is stumbling here as I think it is very difficult to deduce exactly what John Paul II taught on this matter – but he is right that the Church and Churchmen like Neuhaus have staked out a precarious and novel position that I’d like to call “semi-traditionalism” – if that weren’t such an awkward term. There has been an uneven tradition, embodied perhaps first by Orestes Brownson, of lashing together a form of enlightenment liberalism to Catholic natural law teaching. It should be explored in depth sometime, without Damon Linker’s “heavy breathing” or even the rhetorical demands of a debate held by the New Republic.

Cross-posted at Enchiridion Militis