Letter to the Editor

World magazine, 7-26-08 issue

Thoughts On Christianity and classical liberalism

Sent Mo 9-15-08 to Joel BELZ, fndr and editor of WORLD magazine (jbelz@worldmag.com), not pub'd

Thank you for your excellent editorial "Wrong Doxology" (26 Jul 08). I too have been frustrated for years that while most Christians embrace 'social conservatism,' far fewer follow through with consistency and embrace fiscal and foreign policy conservatism. Another term for fiscal conservatism is libertarianism, which seems to scare off many Christians. I've seen Norquist's book and it is excellent. Although seemingly out of favor among today's evangelicals, there is a large and impressive body of thought to be mined to return ourselves to this way of thinking. The good news is that its a return to the principles of not only America's founding, but also those of the 16th century Dutch Revolution and the 17C Glorious Revolution in Britain. Basically a return to our God-given heritage of liberty under God. Three of my favorite books along these lines are:

- Edmund Opitz' 1999 "The Libertarian Theology of Freedom"
- M. Stanton Evans' 1994 "The Theme is Freedom"
- Douglas F. Kelly's 1992 "The Emergence of Liberty in the Modern World"

I've got summary/reviews of these and other books at my website at https://rinskje.tripod.com/Index.html. Evans notices a very odd but telling thing; that the following 2 propositions are widely accepted and uncontroversial:

- that Western Civilization was the cradle of liberty
- that Christianity was at the center of Western Civilization

But when you put those 2 together to claim (as evangelicals have and should continue to) that Christianity is the basis of liberty, it becomes very oddly controversial and offensive to many. Hmmmm. Something fishy here. Anyway, I really appreciate this line of thinking and hope to see more of it in WORLD magazine.

Thanks, Steve Sawyer

PS If you haven't seen it, George Nash' "History of the Conservative Intellectual Movement Since WWII" is also excellent, including a great description of how these 3 major threads of conservatism have clashed and cooperated over these many years e.g. Frank Meyer's "fusionism".