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 threat with a significant influence on the GOP. I just don’t see it.)
Theoconservatism, by contrast, has had an enormous influence.
For the record, a theocon, in my view, is someone who believes that a secular society is both undesirable and unsustainable; that for most of its history the United States has been a thoroughly Christian nation founded on absolute moral principles that make no sense outside of a religious context; that the liberal and secular drift of American culture since the 1960s is the result of an organized effort by liberal and secular elites in the nation’s education and media establishments to impose its corrupt views on the nation through anti-democratic means (especially through the courts); that the practical consequence of secularization is a sex-saturated popular culture, the collapse of crucially important social institutions (such as traditional marriage), a general separation of law from religiously based moral principles, and the rise of a “culture of death” in which abortion and euthanasia are widely permitted and practiced; that the solution to secularization is to bring modern America (back) into line with the moral strictures of biblical religion; and that this reversion can be accomplished by allowing the country’s Christian essence to reassert itself democratically—primarily by citizens voting for conservative Christian politicians who advance religion in public life through public policy, court appointments, and constitutional amendments, but also by proposing popular referenda (such as the anti-gay marriage initiatives that passed overwhelmingly in twelve states during the 2004 election cycle) that frustrate the tyrannical ambitions of secularists.
In other words, theoconservatism is the policy agenda of the religious right melded to the Americanist-Catholic political theology of John Courtney Murray. Over the past several years this peculiar theological hybrid has come to serve as the lingua franca of the Republican Party’s social-conservative wing. Theoconservatism exists, and it is influential.
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.
