Christian Faith and Modern Democracy: God and Politics in the Fallen World (Frank M. Covey, Jr. Loyola Lectures in Politial Analysis)

Rating:
Summary: "Constitutionalism Without Liberalism"
Review: R. P. Kraynak, who teaches political science at Colgate, reminds us of Augustine's Doctrine of the Two Cities, meaning that the state's sphere is political and economic management and the church's sphere is salvation of souls. The two realms or swords are distinct but not separate. Indeed, the effective implementation of the Augustinian proposal, Prof. Kraynak maintains, preserves us, on the one hand, from the danger of totalitarian politics and, on the other, from the danger of theocracy. In an effective and even elegant argument, he warns us, however, that the church's (or, perhaps, churches') embrace of Kant's "personalism"--that we are people and not things--is, after a point, incompatible with Christianity, for Kantianism is rooted in naturalism, denyiny our eternal destiny and supernatural duties. Christianity has become so suffused with the liberal language of "rights" that it is increasingly given to the kind of sociological leveling and mass taste which are the poisoned fruit of the Modern Project but are finally destructive of political order. The Gospel, Kraynak suggests, tells us not only of the law of love but also of the fact of sin. Recognition of those eternal realities are at the heart of prudent statecraft and of Christian faith. We witness today a secular chiliasm which, to use Moynihan's apt phrase, "defines deviancy down" (238-242) and leads to moral relativism, nihilism, and emotivism which deny the transcendent and exalt ungrounded and unbounded "rights." Kraynak's insights into the ideas of freedom and dignity (61; cf. Rom 7:22 and 1 Pt 3:4), of proper Christian resistance to human rights (153), and of the roles of the secular state (189, 228-229; cf. 1 Pt 2:13-17) are simply superb. Although he might have mined Voegelin's works more effectively--and should have learned the proper spelling of "supersede" (!)--he cogently marshals the work of Solzhenitsyn, Goerner, Niemeyer, O'Donovan, Maritain, Novak, John Courtney Murray, John Finnis, MacIntyre, Strauss, and Lasch, in addition to John Paul II and Reinhold Niebuhr, while standing in principled opposition to Ackerman, Dworkin, Rawls, and Rorty. "Modern culture has cut out the highest part of the human soul," he writes, "the part that longs for eternity and for spiritual transcendence of the here and now, the part that seeks the presence of the Incarnate God . . ." (270). Warmly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Liberalism is Dead!
Review: This is a genuine 21st century article. Liberalism--based on the idea of the sovereign individual--has no future.