In fact, far from being the demise of the GOP, the coming generation of evangelicals, Catholics and fellow travelers can be the seeds for the conservative movement’s intellectual rebirth.
A few years back, after I had published a National Review cover story about neo-traditionalism that would serve as the genesis for my book Crunchy Cons, I received an e-mail from a young Protestant seminarian. He had read the piece, he said, and finally his conservatism made sense to him. Progressive evangelical Jim Wallis had lectured his seminary class and talked about how they had a duty to help the poor, to build up communities, to care for the environment and suchlike.
The man told me that he and his classmates agreed with all of it, but when Wallis got to the part about why they should become Democrats, it ended that. The seminarians, my correspondent explained, all knew that they were conservatives and couldn’t accept liberal dogma on abortion and sexuality, nor statist solutions. Even so, these young conservative evangelicals were far more sympathetic to most of Wallis’ goals than their parents would have been.
And why not? Shocking as it might be to some, conservatism did not start with Ronald Reagan. There is a rich and varied library of postwar writing by men such as Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver and Robert Nisbet, who were part of the traditionalist conservative school. Traditionalist conservatives focused on questions of cultural and social health; libertarian conservatives were more concerned about the economy and the overweening state.
Read it all.
Rod Dreher on the Republican party, religious Conservatives and the Future
In fact, far from being the demise of the GOP, the coming generation of evangelicals, Catholics and fellow travelers can be the seeds for the conservative movement’s intellectual rebirth.
A few years back, after I had published a National Review cover story about neo-traditionalism that would serve as the genesis for my book Crunchy Cons, I received an e-mail from a young Protestant seminarian. He had read the piece, he said, and finally his conservatism made sense to him. Progressive evangelical Jim Wallis had lectured his seminary class and talked about how they had a duty to help the poor, to build up communities, to care for the environment and suchlike.
The man told me that he and his classmates agreed with all of it, but when Wallis got to the part about why they should become Democrats, it ended that. The seminarians, my correspondent explained, all knew that they were conservatives and couldn’t accept liberal dogma on abortion and sexuality, nor statist solutions. Even so, these young conservative evangelicals were far more sympathetic to most of Wallis’ goals than their parents would have been.
And why not? Shocking as it might be to some, conservatism did not start with Ronald Reagan. There is a rich and varied library of postwar writing by men such as Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver and Robert Nisbet, who were part of the traditionalist conservative school. Traditionalist conservatives focused on questions of cultural and social health; libertarian conservatives were more concerned about the economy and the overweening state.
Read it all.