Wonder-Working Power

The roots and the reach of the religious right.

Daniel McCarthy from the December 2006 issue

(Page 11 of 11)

“that Falwell and his followers were being unrealistic in supposing that their idiosyncratic faith, based on highly subjective ‘born again’ experiences, could serve as the religiously based public philosophy the country so desperately needed.” Catholicism, on the other hand, had the natural law tradition, with its claims to objectivity and rationality. As well, in Linker’s words, “there was the Church’s long history of theological and political reflection, which made Catholics far more competent than evangelicals and other Protestants to take the lead in pressing religiously based moral arguments in the nation’s life.” o:p> /o:p>

For Linker, these qualities make the theocon ideology more potent than that of the rest of the religious right. He points to the current or recent presence of several theocons on the President’s Council on Bioethics as evidence of how respectable theocon arguments—against human cloning and embryonic stem-cell research, for example—are becoming. But Linker may be overestimating Neuhaus’ success at shaping policy by shaping the world of ideas. The President’s Council on Bioethics has had so little influence on the stem-cell debate, for example, that theocon arguments failed even to keep the Senate majority leader from the president’s own party (Bill Frist, a bona fide religious rightist himself) from approving federal funding of stem-cell research. And Bush’s use of vaguely Catholic rhetoric did not stop him from approving the “morning after” contraceptive pill (and potential abortifacient) Plan B for over-the-counter sale in the face of theocon objections. On the electoral level: Rick Santorum, the theocons’ poster child on Capitol Hill, is the Senate’s most endangered incumbent this year. Linker’s book is an engaging and invaluably informative account of the roots of theoconservatism, but its author could stand to borrow some of Patrick Hynes’ political acumen. o:p> /o:p>

All that is not to say the theocons /span> span class= "c1">have had no effect on the nation’s politics. Perhaps ironically, considering Neuhaus’ background, where they have been most successful is in shoring up conservative Catholic support for President Bush’s foreign policy. Linker devotes a chapter to the “distinctive theocon approach to just war reasoning—ridiculing antiwar clerics for having forgotten the Catholic tradition and praising Republican administrations for keeping it alive.” After the initial success of the Iraq invasion, Neuhaus wondered in print whether in the future it might be possible to consider “military action in terms not of the last resort but of the best resort.” There’s a curiously Jacobin streak in this now-conservative priest. In the ’60s, in the ’90s, and in Iraq today, Neuhaus has called for uprooting the established order in the name of justice and democracy. The results, as far as the rest of us can see, have not been encouraging. o:p> /o:p>

So long as Catholics and Protestants were at odds, Linker concludes, both sides had a vested interest in minimizing the mixture of doctrine and state power. But now, “to the extent that they come to consider each other allies and to recognize their potential combined political clout, they will be tempted to view the separation of church and state as something less than a bargain—as an unacceptable sacrifice of their freedom to do everything they can to bring the country’s public life into conformity with what they believe to be the truth proclaimed by Jesus Christ.” o:p> /o:p>

The religious right’s ecumenical unity might not be as great as Linker, or Hynes, imagines. Bush lost the Catholic vote in 2000, and while much has been made of the fact that he won it in 2004—against a Catholic opponent—he did little better among Catholics than among the population at large. Churchgoing evangelicals are an overwhelmingly Republican bloc, but Catholics are only gradually being co-opted, beginning with those who attend services most often. o:p> /o:p>

By themselves, the theocons may not be much of a threat to Americans’ liberties. But together with the organized power of evangelical Protestants, they’re a mighty force for the Republican Party, even if what they get in policy terms is not more morality in public life but merely more war.
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