That was a lot of quoting, I know, but it is necessary in order to get at Damon’s real, substantive argument: contemporary theoconservatism is different from past efforts to democratically maintain or expand the influence of religious principles and groups because it is sectarian and authoritarian in a way those past mergers of political agendas and spiritual witnesses were not. The theocons, in Damon’s accounting, have crafted a “public language of moral purpose” that is constructed primarily or at least significantly around claims to naturally grounded, religiously orthodox imperatives–imperatives that, because of their organic connection to the American liberal order itself, are held to automatically carry an objective weight that makes all opposition to them not so much disagreements as potential instances of profound civic and moral treason. The practical, if unstated, aim of building one’s theologico-political language in that way is thus not to generate perfect consensus–which is neither expected nor really needed–but rather to lead Christian majorities, even merely small ones, into feeling culturally justified in taking, and religiously required to take, extreme populist action. What Damon observes about some of Neuhaus’s various statements in regards to atheists and Jews (both of whom he says can, of course, be citizens, but perhaps not entirely good ones, especially not if they insist on calling attention to themselves and their rights in such a way as to make themselves appear to be “strangers in their own [increasingly Christian] country”), and how such words contrast with the more ecumenical efforts (such as between Catholics and evangelical Protestants) that he is better known for, is just one example of the evidence he marshals to support his claim.  So Damon’s argument does make a distinction between the public religiosity of a Bryan or King and the religiosity of a Brownback or Dobson; his analysis does point to a difference between the religiously informed campaign against slavery in the 19th century, and the religiously informed campaign against stem-cell research today. Whether that difference amounts to the latter being fairly labeled “theocrats” is a separate issue; this basic distinction is Damon’s real contribution to debates over religion and politics in America today. ~Prof. Arben Fox, In Media Res

I’m very pleased to see Prof. Fox back at his blog after a hiatus of several months.  In addition to always having interesting material on his blog, he happens to be among the earliest supporters of Eunomia.  He has recently produced two extremely high-quality posts that should interest everyone who enjoys delving into the problems of conservatism and how to define social and religious visions of order in the context of conservatism.  His insights on Linker’s critique of theoconservatism are all the more valuable, as he is a friend of Linker and has some greater familiarity with the subtleties of Linker’s argument, which, as he notes in the post, frequently get lost in Linker’s own argumentation.  As I read this post, I realised that my own dismissal of Linker’s objections to Neuhaus and First Things as the product of some personal pique was premature and and incorrect.  Linker is recognising some real distinction between what the “theocons” (I’m still not a fan of this term) and earlier religiously-inspired public figures advocate that gets lost in hyperbolic language about “besieging” secular America and the onset of theocracy. 

As I look more closely, I think I understand why Linker objects to the conflation of all American public religiosity into one common phenomenon, which the “theocons” then set about to define in their image, and it is similar to certain anti-Straussian objections against the habit of certain Straussians (which is also present among the “theocons”) of conflating all theories of natural law and giving them the most positive, “traditional” spin conceivable, so that when Enlightenment thinkers refer to the “law of nature” a theocon or Straussian will automatically say, “There, you see, they are relying on Christian natural law, which means that I can import a Christian natural law understanding into this liberal framework and claim that the liberal framework has always and forever been that of the Christian tradition.”  This is a clever move.  But, without denying some real historical links between medieval and modern conceptions of natural law, I don’t think this is right.  A central problem one might have with this identification of the two is that it is not necessarily true at all and probably is not true, and it is a remarkably weak link on which to base a large part of your project.

But if Prof. Fox finds Linker somewhat persuasive here, he notes that the “theocons” are a varied bunch and there are any number of pieces that would probably qualify and modify the most extreme claims Linker cites.  Also, for all of the complaints about the “unprecedented” nature of what the theocons are trying to do, it appears to Prof. Fox that Linker’s critique often seems to be heavily textual and not very well set in the historical contexts of the texts he is using to support his view (I might add that now it is Linker who seems to resemble the Straussians).  As Prof. Fox says:

So, for example, he takes up Madison’s writings on factions and applies it to religious denominations, concluding that above all the founders wanted to see a liberalized, disestablished, civic religious pluralism in America–thereby ignoring the important legal and historical argument that national disestablishment was meant to guarantee that the federal government would not interfere with the widely accepted and often quite orthodox public religious establishments in the states. He condemns populism at almost every opportunity, reading the populist elements of the theocon argument in light of the irrational “paranoia” that Richard Hofstadter and other midcentury liberals diagnosed as motivating all forms of popular discontent with mainstream secular liberalism–thereby ignoring the important ways in which the progressive roots of midcentury liberalism, in the Populists and the Progressives and even in the New Deal, were themselves often very publicly religious. He quotes (twice) President Kennedy, holding him up as an example of a properly secular liberalism–thereby ignoring the ways in which Kennedy had both the need and the luxury to make himself into a vanguard of secularism in an America (the need because he was a Catholic running in for president in a strongly and contentedly Protestant country; the luxury because, as a strongly and contentedly Protestant country, America at that time felt no more need to see Kennedy position himself in light whatever explicitly religious public concerns might have existed in 1960 than they did for Eisenhower to do the same eight years earlier, or for Truman before that). In short, Damon really does believe that the increasing mix of religion and politics is a bad thing–bad for religion, bad for social and educational and foreign policy, bad for American freedoms themselves–and is happy to say so, complete with occasional allusions to theocracy when it suits his purposes, even if that does what he frequently accuses the theocons of doing: reducing complicated issues to simplistic accusations. (Though again, to be fair, Damon is plainly aware of this; for better or worse, his aim was not to produce a work that didn’t take sides.)

Prof. Fox makes many other excellent points, but the one that makes what I consider to be the most important conclusion is the way in which Prof. Fox identifies theoconservatism as another brand of modern gnosticism (in the Voegelinian sense):

What’s going on here, I think, is that the theocons, as Damon notes several times in his book, want to believe, and sometimes say they believe, that the religious identity of Americans (and, when they get civilizational in their rhetoric, all of the West) is and always will be there, that it is a gift from God, a sign of God’s hand in history….and yet, they don’t actually act in accordance with that belief. Rather, they often essentially appear to be the sort of communitarians who think religious community actually isn’t inevitable, that a secular and individualized world really is a functional possibility, and so religion and civil society must be fought for; they must be redeemed. But of course, as liberals at heart, or at least as conservatives who have reluctantly bought into liberal accounts of how modern society has secularized and moved away from religious community, the only way they can imagine actually fighting for religion is to transform it and its practitioners into authorities who, because they have nature on their side, you must logically consent to. They are, to borrow and turn around an old Vogelinian phrase, “eschatizing the immanent.” [sic] Voegelin argued, anticipating Neuhaus (who for all I know has been greatly influenced by him), that human beings crave immanence; without religious or traditional orthodoxy to satisfy that craving, otherwise secular ideas will take the form of a kind of gnosticism, and the eschaton, the promise of salvation and completion which religion holds out, will be “immanentized.” There’s more to say on that subject; but for now, note simply that theocons commit this error in reverse: they are trying to take the end-times, the battles and judgments and absolutes of the last days, and make them present in presidential elections and foreign wars. They are trying to identify the immanent, the ordinary, the partisan, with the revelatory.

If true, that would heighten and sharpen my reasons for objecting to the theocon/First Things project.  It would also explain the theocons’ general affinity with neoconservatism and their sympathies with the latter’s very clearly immanentist political religion of democratism.  Prof. Fox has done a great service in getting past the conventional responses to Linker of the sort I myself have made and getting at what seems to be the real essence of the matter.