Still more on "The Politics of God"

Thanks to Michael P. for linking to the piece from the Chronicle on Mark Lilla's Stillborn God, which was excerpted recently in the New York Times Magazine.

The Chronicle piece quotes Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian at the University of Virginia, as being concerned about Lilla's view

that there is something called "the West" and that "within this alleged 'West' there is a 'We' that conforms to the core tenets of textbook history: 'We' were once burdened by superstitions and irrationalities until somehow 'we' became enlightened."

(Here's Prof. Vaidhyanathan's post over at "Altercations", from which the above quote was taken.)

Wholly apart from the Lilla excerpt -- more on that later -- and without disagreeing with Prof. Vaidhyanathan's point that the boundaries and content of "the West" are not always obvious, I guess I'm one who still believes firmly that it is a useful -- indeed, a necessary -- idea.  There is, it seems to me, a "West," and its history is inseparable from "our" history as Catholics and Americans.

According to the Chronicle, Prof. Vaidhyanathan is also

. . . not "puzzled" by the sort of "theological radicalism" that emanates from Iran or Saudi Arabia. He claims that it echoes the theologically infused politics that one can find "in any conservative Baptist church in Texas." Even more arresting, Vaidhyanathan claims that this "hard-core millenarianism...is perhaps the most powerful strain of political thought in the United States today."

Good Lord.  Again:  Distinctions must be drawn -- it is important that they be drawn, and those who fail to draw them err badly -- but are too often not being drawn (see, e.g., Andrew Sullivan's tired "Christianist" riff, or "American Theocracy", or "American Fascists", or . . . ):  The GOP is not the Taliban; Rick Santorum is not Sayyid Qutb; our "Red v. Blue" is not the Thirty Years' War; Operation Rescue is not Al-Qaeda; regulating partial-birth-abortion is not stoning unveiled women; etc.  The suggestion that the violent ideology "that emanates from Iran or Saudi Arabia" "echoes" what one can find in "any conservative Baptist church in Texas" is . . . seriously mistaken (an "echo" after all, is a fainter version of the original sound, isn't it?).  And, the claim that "hard-core millenarianism" is "perhaps the most powerful strain of political thought in the United States" is . . . unhelpful and inconsistent with the facts.

Now, with respect to the Lilla piece, certainly, it's the kind of thing that I suppose we should be delighted to find in the Sunday newspaper, and discussed in the public forum.  It's full of big and interesting ideas and claims.  At the end of the day, though, I came away thinking that there is a way of thinking about the relationship religion and politics -- a Catholic way -- that is ignored in the essay.  As I read the piece, it canvasses three ways of thinking about this relationship:  (a) religious questions are and should be separate; (b) politics involves, and simply involves, the implementation of God's revealed, specific plans on earth; and (c) "liberal theology", a "third way between Christian orthodoxy and the Great Separation," which failed -- Lilla thinks -- because it offered no answer to the question, "why be a Christian?" (or a Jew, etc.).

But, the "Great Separation", as Lilla frames it, is not -- it seems to me -- the only alternative (nor, indeed, has it really been our alternative) to theocracy or the hollowed-out thing that Lilla (perhaps inaccurately) calls "liberal theology."  See, e.g., John Courtney Murray, "We Hold These Truths."

I have some quibbles with Lilla's "Great Separation" narrative, too, but I'll save those for another post.