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PATRICK HENRY AND MARK LILLA. I had the same reaction to Mark Lilla's long article on faith and politics in the New York Times as Matt; I'm not convinced that we can reasonably say that the religification of politics is in America's past. Lilla:
As for the American experience, it is utterly exceptional: there is no other fully developed industrial society with a population so committed to its faiths (and such exotic ones), while being equally committed to the Great Separation. Our political rhetoric, which owes much to the Protestant sectarians of the 17th century, vibrates with messianic energy, and it is only thanks to a strong constitutional structure and various lucky breaks that political theology has never seriously challenged the basic legitimacy of our institutions. Americans have potentially explosive religious differences over abortion, prayer in schools, censorship, euthanasia, biological research and countless other issues, yet they generally settle them within the bounds of the Constitution. It’s a miracle.Right now I'm in the midst of Hanna Rosin's God's Harvard, an examination of Patrick Henry College. Patrick Henry is designed explicitly to put Republicans of strong evangelical faith into positions of political power. Its students are largely homeschoolers, divorced from many of the currents of mainstream American life. To some extent at least, the project is working; Patrick Henry is acquiring a positive reputation in conservative political circles and a record of good internships and placements in Washington. Reading the book I find myself less convinced that we're all agreed about the Great Separation, or that fundamentalist Islam is the only challenger to the concept of the secular state. --Robert Farley
