Religion & Law

Damon ("Theocracy!") Linker has a new book out, called The Religious Test.  (Here is an interview with Linker, from the Economist.)  Patrick Deneen shares some not-in-the-usual-categories thoughts about the book, here.  He concludes:

Linker?s story is finally informed by its own triumphalist and Providentialist storyline, the history of the victory of Liberalism and the need for it to maintain firm control of what he calls the ?skirmish line? between religion and politics. This storyline wholly obscures what I think to be the real story ? the story of how modern economic conservatism and modern identity liberalism have combined in support of titanic inequalities in our society, the former in the name of corporate profit and the latter in the name of lifestyle autonomy and the ?secession of the successful.? Truly homeless today are the religious conservatives whose voices Linker would silence rather than engage. America needs the older lyrics that religious voices once raised as a prophetic witness to the Republic, that language of equal dignity that demands more than indifference and more than the private reveries and worse, the self-congratulation of today?s autonomous individuals. It calls for the language of community, fidelity, memory, and a belief in our shared fate that was ever the greatest contribution of American faith to the Republic. So long as contemporary liberalism insists that those voices be shut out of the public sphere, they will continue to sing a querulous and tinny song, one that remains out of tune with the better angels of their own beliefs.