October, 2007

The Influence of the Religious Left

by Philip Jenkins

October 23rd, 2007

Damon writes that “As for the religious left, I’d be troubled by it, too, if it had any political influence to speak of. But thankfully, it doesn’t.”
I’m surprised to hear him say this. Just to take one item, I would cite the massive role of African-American churches and pastors in mobilizing the vote in that [...]

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Theoconservatism Exists

by Damon Linker

October 22nd, 2007

Philip: In response to your post from last Friday, I don’t consider Rushdoony to be a theoconservative. And I completely agree that his influence has been negligible. (Here I part company with some critics of the religious right, such as Kevin Phillips and Michelle Goldberg, who treat Reconstructionism as a genuine [...]

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Some Scattered Responses

by Mark Lilla

October 22nd, 2007

Some scattered responses to my interlocutors:
On the Trinity: having tried to compress the argument of The Stillborn God to a couple thousand words, I see now how even good readers like Philip could be misled. The argument I make there is that the strange theological dynamics of the trinitarian idea made it difficult for [...]

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Was Historical Christianity Really That Much Different?

by Philip Jenkins

October 22nd, 2007

One of the strengths of Mark Lilla’s writing is that it makes us explore and confront our assumptions. In some cases, though, I honestly question the basic roots of his argument. I wonder how many historians of Christianity would recognize a characterization like the following:
The ideas and problems of Christian political theology are what shaped [...]

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Does Theo-conservatism Exist?

by Philip Jenkins

October 19th, 2007

Where I disagree with Damon is in his basic concept of “Theo-conservatism.” It’s a lovely term, but what does it really mean? I am surprised to see someone like Rushdoony cited as the representative of anything. Despite the claims of his disciples, the man was a marginal flake whose Reconstructionist ideology had no influence I [...]

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God’s Sovereignty and Mere Orthodoxy

by Damon Linker

October 19th, 2007

I appreciate the thoughtfulness of everyone’s comments, as well as the civility with which they have been presented. I have a handful of comments, first for Andrew and Mark, and second for Philip.
Andrew and Mark: In my experience working, for a time, among the leading intellectual lights of the (Catholic) religious right, I learned [...]

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Prohibitionists and Anti-Evolutionists: More Successful than You May Think

by Philip Jenkins

October 18th, 2007

I’m reluctant to say much in response to Mark’s reply. With courtesy and patience, he spells out the areas in which we disagree, and where, I suspect, we will continue to differ.
Let me confine myself to one specific point. Mark comments how prohibitionists, anti-evolutionists, etc. lost on specific issues, and thereafter “they think of themselves [...]

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When Is Religion in Politics a Problem? When I Don’t Like It

by Philip Jenkins

October 17th, 2007

I offer this initial contribution, focusing on the essays by Damon and Andrew.
I wholeheartedly agree with most of Andrew’s analysis, not least when he says that “America is substantively and experientially a deeply religious country, and its political discourse has always been saturated with religious rhetoric and imagery.” Historically too, he may well be right [...]

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Self-Rule Versus Chosenness

by Mark Lilla

October 17th, 2007

Damon Linker and Philip Jenkins put forward serious challenges to my article, and I’m grateful to Andrew Sullivan for formulating the first response I myself would have given, especially to Damon’s concerns. To elaborate on it, I would only say that the key distinction in my mind between political theology and modern political philosophy concerns [...]

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Religious Country, Secular Constitution

by Andrew Sullivan

October 15th, 2007

Andrew Sullivan, blogger extraordinaire and author of The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back, offers a meditation on the tensions in American politics between a religious culture with a religious politics and the secularism of the American founding documents, without which, Sullivan argues, “America would long since have succumbed to some version of theocracy or another.” According to Sullivan, “the achievement of keeping God at arm’s length in the ordering structure of a polity is very, very rare,” and Americans should better appreciate its rarity and fragility.

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Best of the Blogs: Jonathan Rowe on American Political Theology

Jonathan Rowe of the Positive Liberty blog offers this illuminating post which lays out what he takes to be Mark Lilla’s Straussian assumptions of the essentially atheistic nature of post-Hobbesian Western political thinking, discusses the unusual theological views of America’s founders, and “the tension between America’s non-Christian, generally theistic civil religion, and orthodox Christianity,” which continues to exert great influence in American politics.

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The Stillborn Modernization

by Philip Jenkins

October 12th, 2007

In his vigorous reply, the eminent Penn State religion scholar Philip Jenkins contests both Mark Lilla’s reading of history and the lessons he draws from it. In contrast to Lilla’s claim of American innocence of political theologies, Jenkins points to the centrality of religiously motivated politics in “the moral crusades of the late nineteenth century, … the Social Gospel, the era of Progressivism and Prohibition” and the civil rights movement. Jenkins’ alternative theory of the rise of liberal toleration emphasizes “changes in the material life of Western societies” brought about by increasing commercialization, which “has nothing to do with the intricacies of Christian theology, and was only marginally connected with Enlightenment political theory.”

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Political Theology in America

by Damon Linker

October 10th, 2007

Damon Linker, author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege, contests Mark Lilla’s claim that Americans have left political theology behind. According to Linker, the prevailing attitude of Americans to their political institutions is neither fundamentally secular nor radically religious. Rather, there is a large segment of the population — the religious right — who “passionately defend American constitutional principles and political institutions but who also interpret these principles and institutions in explicitly theological terms.” Therefore, according to Linker, learning to cope with political theology is not only required to grasp politics abroad, but also to grasp what is going on at home.

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