Christianity is a universal vision that Christians know to be a supernatural possibility that has to be consciously and freely affirmed–and might not be! This makes Christians more sociologically self-aware, by which I mean that we know ourselves to be a distinctive way of being human that can’t be taken for granted.

I like this view; it seems to reflect the views of (then) Cardinal Ratzinger that the Catholic Church might become smaller but purer. It’s a view that says, “We’re a minority and we’re comfortable with that. We offer you membership as an option – not an expectation.”

Yet I sense this view of Christianity is a curiously cold, ahistorical one. Throughout much of US history it has been assumed that a person was Protestant unless he emphasized otherwise. In various (ethnic) neighborhoods it’s assumed that people all embrace a similar religion. Certainly this is true within families. In short, the idea that I would operate on the default assumption that a person professes no religion “unless he has consciously and freely affirmed it” is false – or at least, of very recent vintage. As a sociological matter, most of us are born into a religion; we must exercise an act of will to change that default designation.

William Saletan’s review in The New York Times is very evenhanded. Regarding the point under discussion, Saletan says:

And in a survey of 2,000 Americans, Haidt found that self-described liberals, especially those who called themselves “very liberal,” were worse at predicting the moral judgments of moderates and conservatives than moderates and conservatives were at predicting the moral judgments of liberals. Liberals don’t understand conservative values. And they can’t recognize this failing, because they’re so convinced of their rationality, open-mindedness and enlightenment.

I think perhaps you haven’t read or listened to enough of what Haidt actually says.

Do a google search on “jonathan haidt liberals don’t understand conservatives” and you’ll get plenty of sources supporting precisely what I said above.

Seems like this blindness is a function of power. The 2 examples of sight Rusty points out are Christianity and Judaism. One is on the decline while the other has always been on the verge of destruction. Will liberalism’s success lead to it’s sight?

I suspect the powerful always have the privilege of being blind to certain things. A dominant paradigm —

is metaphysically near perfect. Its point of view is the standard for point-of-viewlessness, its particularity the meaning of universality. Its force is exercised as consent, its authority as participation, its supremacy as the paradigm of order, its control as the definition of legitimacy.

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Yup, liberalism is a dominant paradigm. Yup, it has been criticized for blindness – as in the quote above, offered by Catharine A. MacKinnon, speaking specifically about male domination of society.

Christianity has also been a dominant paradigm in the US. Since colonial times the majority of colonists/citizens have professed it (although recently the share of people professing mainline Protestantism has fallen below 50%).

Where liberalism and Christianity collide, somebody’s preferred view loses. Can we criminalize sodomy? The Supreme Court says yes – then no. People on each side of this issue experienced a loss – and presumably gained some new insight in the process. Neither side could remain entirely blind to the concerns of the other.

[Liberty] is the product not of institutions, but of a temper, of an attitude towards life; of that mood that looks before and after and pines for what it is not. It is idle to look to laws or courts, or principalities, or powers to secure it…. It is secure only in that … sense of fair play — of give and take — and the uncertainty of human hypothesis — of how changeable and passing are our surest convictions — which has so hard a chance to survive in any times, perhaps especially in our own.

Herbert Muschamp:

We do not embrace reason at the expense of emotion. We embrace it at the expense of self-deception.

Reinhold Niebuhr:

A too confident sense of justice always leads to injustice….
Nations, as individuals, who are completely innocent in their own esteem are insufferable in their human contacts.
[We are never safe] against the temptation of claiming God too simply as the sanctifier of whatever we most fervently desire…. [We need] a sense of modesty about the virtue, wisdom and power available to us [and] a sense of contrition about the common human frailties and foibles which lie at the foundation of both the enemy’s demonry and our vanities….
If we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory.

Blaise Pascal:

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Perhaps so.

[I]t is the task of law to pursue a reform of society and of conditions of life in all milieux, starting with the most deprived, so that always and everywhere it may be possible to give every child coming into this world a welcome worthy of a person. Help for families and for unmarried mothers, assured grants for children, a statute for illegitimate children and reasonable arrangements for adoption – a whole positive policy must be put into force so that there will always be a concrete, honorable and possible alternative to abortion.

How many Conservatives, particularly Conservative politicians, would embrace this approach?

Haidt has also found that (in general — speaking of populations and not of individuals) while conservatives are capable of seeing issues from a liberal point of view, liberals are not even capable of seeing issues from a conservative point of view.

That’s… more than a bit of an exaggeration. I think you’ve more into it than what he wrote.