The Future of Liberalism by Alan Wolfe

Author:Alan Wolfe [Wolfe, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: General, United States, Philosophy, Political Science, Political Ideologies, Political, History & Theory, Conservatism & Liberalism, Liberalism, Liberalism - United States, United States - Politics and Government - 21st Century
ISBN: 9780307266774
Google: PwLoYVaSX9IC
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Published: 2009-10-14T07:00:00+00:00

A RENEWED ENLIGHTENMENT?

Western Europe is no longer all that religious; even Spain, once the symbol of reaction, has become a primarily secular society, indeed, one of the most liberal countries in Europe on the issue of gay rights. This does not mean that religion, and religious thought, have disappeared from the Continent: Pope Benedict XVI is a theologian of considerable distinction; thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida engaged in a dialogue on the subject of religion in the aftermath of September 11, 2001; and the rise of Islam in Western Europe—it is now the second most adhered to faith in most European countries—has provoked considerable discussion about the mutual compatibility of liberal openness and godly devotion. Yet these debates differ considerably from the ones that provoked Diderot and Kant. Then, religion had the upper hand and liberalism was struggling for recognition. Now, throughout most of Western Europe, liberal values such as toleration and pluralism are widely accepted and religion has to fight for its place in the public arena.

The situation is very different in the United States. It is not just that the United States was founded during the time of the Enlightenment. It is also that with no majority faith and hence no powerful state church it could never have produced a Maria Theresa, let alone a Marie Antoinette. Still, the United States is the one Western liberal democracy that, despite its attractions to modernity in economics and technology, has seen a revival of religion, including a variety of forms of conservative religion, in the last few years of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first. The extent to which the United States has shifted in matters involving religion from the era of Jefferson and Madison to our own times can be illustrated by returning to the example of John Leland. This time, however, it is not Leland's life but his legacy that is important.

Denominationally, but not ideologically, one can draw a direct line from Leland to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), among the most conservative of all of America's contemporary religious denominations. In the 1980s, leaders of the SBC looked out on a land that, in their view, was in the midst of a moral crisis, represented by loose sexual morals, ineffective parental discipline, and the collapse of religious faith. It was time, they believed, to take sides in the culture war that was leading so many political activists on the right end of the political spectrum to campaign against Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion (which the SBC had originally endorsed), as well as to work for the election of conservative Republicans such as Ronald Reagan. Jesus, whose kingdom was not of this world, would now have to be brought down to earth; a church once skeptical of political involvement would have to become deeply political.

The efforts of the SBC have had major consequences for the character of religious liberty in the United States. In the politics of

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