So, frankly, I’m unsure what to conclude from this little debate. I will simply note how perplexing I find your own concluding remarks–about how my construal of the liberal bargain is dangerous because it might vindicate those “Christians and secularists alike” who have contended that there is a tension, sometimes requiring that a choice be made, “between Christ and the republic, between God and Caesar.” Funny, I thought it was Christ himself who pointed to just such a tension at the core of the human condition. ~Damon Linker

But, of course, Ross didn’t say “tension.”  This is what he said:

…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.

There’s tension and then there’s incompatibility.  A man and a woman have tension in their relationship without necessarily being perpetually at odds with each other.  Incompatibility is the state of natural opposites or even mortal enemies.  What Ross was warning against, I think, was the victory of the sort of argument that there is no common ground between the Faith and liberalism; in this argument, the two are irremediably opposed because of fundamental differences of understanding human nature, society, and, of course, the place of religion in society.  I tend to believe this.  Ross does not quite believe it, or seems to hold out hope for some common ground.  But the point is surely that Ross wants to keep alive a relationship between the two, in spite of the occasional tension, the bickering, the odd thrown vase, while Linker wants a clearly delimited arrangement in which adherents of the Faith can operate more or less freely but have little or no influence on political life.  I would prefer trial separation leading to divorce–assuming, of course, that the two were ever really joined in the first place.  What Ross was really talking about was not the Dominical teaching about the distinction between things of God and things of Caesar, or things of heaven and things of earth, but much more basically a question of whether the Faith and a liberal order premised on indidivual rights and contract theory fit together or not.  In forcing the issue, Linker threatens, so Ross suggests, to lend legitimacy to the arguments of the real reactionaries and the hard-core secularists who want the Faith and liberalism to have nothing to do with each other.  This is presumably something Linker does not want, since he already regards theocons as reactionaries and dangers to liberalism–imagine what he would say about someone like me!

This is one more tired attempt to dress up secularism as a modest defense of the idea of the Two Cities, when it is nothing of the kind.  It is manifestly a declaration of the supremacy of the City of Man in the affairs of men, and that’s all there is to it.  Attempts to encroach on the claims of the earthly City will be viewed very negatively, and it is for this reason, and I think probably this reason alone, that Linker attacks the theocons so strenuously.