Douthat v. Robertson on the "TheoCon Moment"

Rev. Pat Robertson responds here -- insisting, among other things, that he is not "jowly" -- to Ross Douthat's recent opinion piece in which he wrote, among other things, that America needs "more Sam Brownbacks . . . whose vision encompasses Third World poverty, prostitution and prison reform without sacrificing any urgency on issues of life and death--and fewer Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells, jowly bigots who seem to think that shaking their fists at America is the best way to persuade it to repent."  Douthat also wrote:

Reform isn't a word you often hear associated with the religious right, of course--and the people who decide such things decided long ago that religion mixed with conservatism yields the scent of brimstone. But contemporary "theoconservatism" is best understood as an heir to America's long line of Christ-haunted reform movements--the abolitionists and the populists, the progressives and the suffragettes, the civil-rights crusaders and even the antiwar activist of the middle 1960s, among whom Richard John Neuhaus (now the "theocon in chief" to his enemies, but then a man of the religious left) cut his teeth.

Like the Victorian reformers who strove to mitigate the worst consequences of the Industrial Revolution, religious conservatism, at its best, is a response to the excesses of the sexual revolution--the fatherless children and broken homes, the millions of abortions and the commodification of human life. The eras aren't parallel, but there are similarities: The Victorian reformers passed the laws against abortion that "theocons" yearn to restore, and waged war against the same kind of crude, politicized Darwinism that's associated with the contemporary culture of death.

Today's religious reformers have it harder, though, because yesterday's progressivism is still with us, hardened into a leadership class that benefited considerably from the sexual revolution, and that perceives any attempt to restrain its evils as a threat to their hard-won liberties. Meanwhile, in one of the ironies of American politics, the Christian right finds itself sharing a party with the same business interests that Victorian Christians struggled against--interests that are often indifferent to social reform, and that provide fewer votes to the Republican Party but often claim a greater portion of its spoils.

Given these obstacles, religious conservatives have made great strides--but for now, at least, they have changed American politics without fundamentally changing America.