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Theoconservatism vs. Theocracy
Friday, 11 February 2011 09:47 amI've been engaged in debates recently with an interlocutor who is very fond of spouting the theoconservative rhetoric of the First Things crowd (Richard John Neuhaus, George Weigel, etc.). Because of this, I've returned to this 2006 book review by Ross Douthat in First Things on books about American theocracy. The best part is when Douthat quotes Ramesh Ponnuru's essay Secularism and Its Discontents:
Douthat comes close to this truth with the cynical observation, "A Christian [. . .] is allowed to mix religion and politics in support of sweeping social reforms— but only if those reforms are safely identified with the political Left." This, of course, should only be true insofar as the political Left has actually gotten things right--but since, as a left-liberal, I think there are plenty of issues which it has gotten right (and plenty where it doesn't go far enough, especially on social issues), I don't think there's actually a contradiction there.
It may be instructive to think about the wish list of Christian-conservative organizations involved in politics. [. . .] Nearly every one of these policies—and all of the most conservative ones—would merely turn the clock back to the late 1950s. That may be a very bad idea, but the America of the 1950s was not a theocracy.Douthat comments:
This reality poses no particular problem if you simply disagree with religious conservatives about abortion or gay marriage or prayer in public schools. But if you're committed to the notion that religious conservatives represent an existential threat to democratic government, you need a broader definition of theocracy to convey your sense of impending doom. Which is why the anti-theocrats often suggest that it doesn't take mullahs, an established church, or a Reconstructionist ban on adultery to make a theocracy. All you need are politicians who invoke religion and apply Christian principles to public policy.Douthat notes, correctly, that this understanding of theocracy would hamper liberal Christians no less than conservative ones:
Just a few weeks before he announced that a “Christian politics” was a contradiction in terms, Garry Wills was in the New York Review of Books celebrating the role of the clergy in the civil rights movement and wiping a nostalgic tear from his eye as he declared that “there was a time, not so long ago, when religion was a force for liberation in America.” After years of blasting any religious encroachment on the political sphere as a threat to the Constitution, the New York Times editorial page awoke to find Cardinal Roger Mahony advocating civil disobedience by Catholics to protest an immigration bill—and immediately praised the cardinal for adding “a moral dimension to what has largely been a debate about politics and economics.” After spending two hundred pages describing all the evils that would pour through any breach in the wall between church and state, Michelle Goldberg suggests that liberals should hope that “leaders on the Religious Left will find a way to channel some of America's moral fervor into a new social gospel.”This is why I prefer Damon Linker's use of the term "theoconservative" over the more broad (and thus less useful) "theocrat": it resists the relativistic lie that all manifestations of religion (or of Christianity in particular) are equally valid in its recognization that the "existential threat" is not so much religion's involvement in politics in general as it is a certain brand of religious politics (be they Christian, Muslim, or something else) which is socially and politically conservative (a brand which undoubtedly includes the comprehensive natural-law ideology of Neuhaus and Weigel promoted in First Things) and which perpetuates and powers the Satanic system of sexism, homophobia, militarism, and economic injustice which exists in our society.
Douthat comes close to this truth with the cynical observation, "A Christian [. . .] is allowed to mix religion and politics in support of sweeping social reforms— but only if those reforms are safely identified with the political Left." This, of course, should only be true insofar as the political Left has actually gotten things right--but since, as a left-liberal, I think there are plenty of issues which it has gotten right (and plenty where it doesn't go far enough, especially on social issues), I don't think there's actually a contradiction there.
