Faith and doubt in Andrew Sullivan

If Lew Daly is cautiously sympathetic with the European christian democratic influence on the Bush administration's faith-based initiative, Andrew Sullivan has a rather different assessment of this policy in his New Republic article, "Crisis of Faith: How Fundamentalism is Splitting the GOP." Sullivan argues that two different versions of conservatism are vying for control of the Republican Party: a conservatism of faith and a conservatism of doubt.

Currently in the ascendancy, conservatives of faith see government as a vehicle for implementing an ambitious agenda of social reform, not all of which would necessarily claim the conservative label. This includes the pursuit of policies intended to uphold virtue and the good life in a variety of areas. It is seized by a crusading spirit which would oppose abortion, same-sex marriage and "indecent television," which are typical conservative causes, while also undertaking to eradicate slavery in Sudan, sexual trafficking and AIDS in Africa, which might be viewed as progressive causes. Conservatives of faith, who dominate the Bush administration, see "nothing wrong with channeling $2 billion of public money to religious charities," as Sullivan tendentiously describes the faith-based initiative. Far from the classical liberal night watchman state of John Locke and Adam Smith, conservatives of faith follow Otto von Bismarck and Benjamin Disraeli in championing a particular version of the welfare state:

What matters to conservatives of faith is therefore less the size of government than its meaning and structure. If it is harnessed to uphold their definition of the good life — protecting a stable family structure, upholding Biblical morality, protecting the vulnerable — then its size is irrelevant, as long as it doesn't overwhelm civil society. . . . This is what remains of conservatism's old belief in individual freedom. The new conservatism of faith has substituted real choice in a free market for regulated choice within an ever-expanding welfare state.

Here one is reminded of Wilfred McClay's analysis in his recent lecture, "American Culture and the Presidency," on which I commented two months ago in "Bush's conservative reformism." There are also parallels in the administration's foreign and defence policies, which are animated by what James W. Skillen calls "freedom-idealism."

Then there is the conservatism of doubt, with which Sullivan is clearly more sympathetic. Conservatives of doubt are deeply suspicious of crusades and reform efforts of any kind. They are the heirs of Thomas Hobbes, Locke and even Edmund Burke, and they are sceptical of the use of moralistic arguments in the policy process. They prefer not to exacerbate social and especially religious cleavages and to maintain government's neutrality on those issues which are especially divisive within the body politic as a whole. They favour divided government, judicial checks on democratic majorities, and protecting the prerogatives of state and local governments against unwarranted federal encroachment.

Conservatives of doubt do not feel the need to ground the defence of freedom in overt religious principles; they are quite content with the Enlightenment principles embodied in the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. They are aware that politics is the art of the possible, a pragmatic effort to secure peace and stability amidst potential social conflict. For this reason, conservatives of doubt, insofar as they seek principles for their activities, look for those most likely to command the widest possible support among the citizenry, eschewing those which are obviously sectarian. They will have none of this business about a transcendent source of positive law.

To be sure, Sullivan is not the first observer to notice that the current conservative movement in North America consists of different strains at considerable variance with each other. In many respects, this diversity within the conservative fold is what kept the former Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance Parties divided for a decade and a half here in Canada. In my own Political Visions and Illusions, I spend the third chapter emphasizing the fact that the conservative vision — if it can be called such — encompasses such variable content as to render it nearly incapable of addressing so central a question as: What is the nature and task of the state?

What is striking about Sullivan's simple taxonomy, however, is the way he draws his boundary. Some have seen contemporary conservatism as an uneasy amalgam of Burkean conservatism and classical liberalism, of social conservatism and economic libertarianism, or perhaps of traditional conservatism and market capitalism. Sullivan, however, divides his parties along a line separating crusading zeal from cautious, conciliatory governance. Depending on which taxonomy one accepts, President Bush is likely to be categorized in different ways. According to the first scheme, Bush would have to be judged a classical liberal, while according to the second he might be viewed as a social conservative. Under the third conception, Bush might fall into either category, while Sullivan would definitely see him as a crusader and his father as a more cautious type. Furthermore, and somewhat ironically, Sullivan would appear to disagree with Daly's assessment that Bush has not increased social spending. To the contrary, Sullivan argues, Bush has increased spending at all levels, while lowering taxes and generally putting his country's finances deeply into the red. This removes him even further from the conservatism of doubt.

If Sullivan were to analyse neocalvinism, where would he place it? There are, after all, some commonalities between Bush's faith-based initiative and the Center for Public Justice's christian democratic approach, as Daly has pointed out. Because neocalvinism is definitely a confessionally explicit movement eschewing the pseudo-neutrality of Enlightenment secularism, I am reasonably confident Sullivan would identify it with the conservatism of faith. He is, of course, welcome to categorize the world as he pleases. Yet to be charitable, he might wish at least to hear out those of us unable to accept his categories.

Most basically, many of us simply find Sullivan's vaunted contrast between truth and doubt, between coercion and persuasion, to be unconvincing. I myself will not defend much of the Bush agenda, which I would agree with Sullivan to be an exercise in dangerous overreach — both domestically and internationally — with precious little awareness of the practical and fiscal limitations under which any government must operate. Furthermore, Sullivan's positive portrait of the conservatism of doubt has a definite affinity with Bernard Crick's classic defence of politics and Jean Bethke Elshtain's celebration of democracy as a rather untidy, non-utopian means of enabling citizens to live together despite their differences. Over the years I have come to appreciate both Crick and Elshtain, whose constrained vision of politics constitutes a valuable corrective to those attaching near redemptive expectations to government.

Yet does it not seem odd that many of those most vocally advocating what Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson call deliberative democracy, i.e., the on-going process of talking out our differences within the public square, do not shrink from telling the rest of us what the final results of such deliberation should be on the most divisive of issues, if only we would exercise cool reason and leave our ultimate commitments behind? As just one example, Sullivan's description of what is at stake in the marriage issue invites readers to take his part — if, that is, they expect to be treated as rational partners in the deliberative process. That there might be another side to the issue — that some might deem it dangerously intrusive for a government to assume the right to redefine an institution anterior to itself — does not occur to Sullivan. If he can portray such a position as the product of special pleading and of sectarian crusading, then he is free to dismiss it. Something similar can be said of his treatment of abortion and the other end-of-life issues.

It must finally be said that Sullivan's article is a worthwhile reminder to us that those who manage successfully to set the terms of a debate can often influence its outcome as well. This is good reason for us to enter it early enough to ensure that the right questions are posed and the terms properly defined.