In trundling along on my path toward understanding how theological, cultural, social, and political conservatism are interrelated yet distinct things, I revisited a fine Heritage lecture by one James Ceaser called "Creed Versus Culture." There is no way to do justice to the whole lecture in the space of a single blog post, but for now I’d zero in on these grafs:
For those of faith [ . . . ] America was assigned a special place in serving a higher cause. There was a second and unwritten constitution meant to operate alongside the legal one. Because these two constitutions deal with largely distinct matters, there was no need to combine them into a single document — indeed, it would be harmful to the purposes of both realms ever to attempt to do so. The two constitutions were meant to exist together in the hearts and thoughts of many Americans and to be complementary in practice. For those of this view, America is not fully America — and cannot be fully loved and cherished—if this unwritten constitution is renounced and if faith is left to survive here, at best, as merely one belief among many.
One of the major activities occurring within the religious right today is the reformulation of this project in a form that speaks to our times. Conditions have changed, and the specific character of the positive project must change as well. Once conceived as a mission of the "reformed" church only, in opposition to Rome and Judaism, it is today being reconceived — I am not speaking of the fine points of theology — as a common enterprise among those devoted to biblical faith to cope with a culture that increasingly considers itself as "post-religious." There is no illusion on the part of most of those of faith that this political-cultural agenda will bring complete unity or cohesiveness, but it seeks an America in which the element of faith would have a central place.
Faith faces new challenges inside the contemporary world. Whether it will find its ally more often with those who support natural rights or those who support tradition is the central issue that will shape the character of conservatism, and thereby the character of our politics, in the period to come.
A portentous line, that. But consider the move from Reformation public theology to the "common enterprise among those devoted to biblical faith." From time to time, arguments surface that a key interlocutor here, or key source of wisdom about America and theology, is to be found in a kind of Protestant Christianity that’s at once less fundamentalist or literalist than some evangelical denominations and less hierarchical and Old World than, say, the Catholic Church. People advancing these sorts of arguments are probably inclined to think that Tocqueville was wrong to imagine that Americans of the future would be either pantheist/godless or Catholic. Yet they also probably recognize that Protestant Christianity has struggled to maintain a less literalist and less hierarchical posture without detouring too much into mere spiritualism or practicalism. The question arises as to whether a certain sort of education is necessary to perpetuate the more moderate form of philosemitic puritanism that Tocqueville adjudged so foundational to, and enduring in, the American character. The further question arises as to what extent the logic of equality, as it has played out in America, impedes, frustrates, or even negates that kind of education. And yet a third question arises as to whether the rise of cultural-political ideology on the right can be accounted for in terms of moves from within the logic of equality aimed at compensating for the fate of the education in question.
