If you’d be so kind as to provide linked citations (with full context) to justify your judgment, that would be helpful.

“Practical Politics” is lots of money. Santorum didn’t have the “practical politics” that you tout.

Assuming Santorum does indeed agree that liberal protestants are fellow citizens, his remarks about them were rather foolish politically. It is not surprising that he didn’t get the nod from the Republican Party. As a church member, he has every right to discern whether liberal protestants conform to the definition of a Christian. But not as a political leader.

As for Obama, I think he has made a costly political mistake that could see him defeated in November. However, the judgement as to whether a particular relationship is or is not a marriage is one a government is obligated to make as part of its task of doing public justice. Obama cannot afford to have no opinion on the matter given the office he holds. That said, I believe his expressed opinion is not only a political mistake, but a category mistake as well.

Eyes rolling. Assuming that Santorum agrees with Kilgore’s observation of him that “he shares the common conservative evangelical view that mainline Protestants are largely apostates” doesn’t AT ALL mean that Santorum does not accept Liberal Protestants as fellow citizens with whom he disagrees with theologically. Of course, he does.

C’mon.

With regards to practical politics, how about this excerpt from a recent First Thoughts blog post by Matthew Schmitz:

“President Obama has come out in support of gay marriage today in an interview with ABC news. … President Obama, for all his accomplishments, is not a moral theologian, a religious leader, or even (whatever some have thought) a prophet. He is a politican responding, reasonably enough, to political pressures. The impatience of the well-connected and wealthy gay lobby in the Democratic party forced the president’s hand.”

Dr. Koyzis, did President Obama engage in “practical politics” with his support of gay marriage? With his support of gay marriage, did he disenfranchise voters who oppose the redefinition of marriage to include gay marriage? And even if Obama did disenfranchise voters who oppose gay marriage, does that mean that he doesn’t regard them as fellow citizens?

The shared meals of the disciples followed a particular liturgy, as testified in the earliest documents of the patristic era, e.g., the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus. For example, Jesus and his disciples almost certainly sang the hallel Psalms (113-118) at the Last Supper. Worship that eschews forms can be just as empty as that which follows them.

Dr. Witt:

Thank you for your kind words. Of course, I agree with your expression of agreement with this Koyzis fellow. :-)

Mr. Divides:

I’m not certain whether you are disagreeing with my characterization of practical politics or with practical politics itself. Like it or not, we must accept as fellow citizens those with whom we disagree. On the other hand, if you propose to disenfranchise your liberal protestant compatriots, you should not be surprised if they decline to co-operate.

Probably because they always have? I grew up in the Congregational Church from before they merged with some other church and started calling themselves the United Church of Christ. You could hardly find a more mainline protestant church than the UCC.

Both creeds were recited in unison as far back as I can remember, which would be the very early fifties.

Santorum, among many others, are justifiably correct in this assessment of liberal Protestantism.

Second, Kilgore speaks of a single Catholic political position, which he identifies entirely with opposition to abortion, and identifies closely with Santorum. A better summary of a Catholic political position could be found in the papal social encyclicals and Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium. It would be an interesting project to compare Santorum’s positions on economic policies or the military with the Catholic social tradition on issues like “just wage,” unions, aid to impoverished countries, and traditional criteria of just war. Except for his opposition to abortion, Santorum has little in common with this tradition. On economics, Santorum lines up more closely with Ayn Rand than with John XIII, embracing an individualism that is entirely at odds with traditional Catholic affirmation of the priority of the “common good.” On war and peace, Santorum is a nationalist.

Third, the correlation between “mainline Protestant” liturgy and Catholicism will, again, not work. Santorum embraces the Latin Mass, and disapproves of the liturgical changes brought in by Vatican II. Those “mainline Protestants” who embrace the political left are also those most willing to embrace such liturgical innovations as communion without baptism, altering the text of the creed, or insisting that the content of the creeds is merely “symbolic.” Retired Episcopal bishop John Spong bragged in his books that he could recite every word of the creed.

I would suggest a different alignment. Those on the extreme theological left (whether Catholic modernists or liberal Protestants) tend to vote as what you call in your book “fifth stage liberals.” Those on the extreme theological right (whether Latin Mass Catholics or Protestant fundamentalists) tend to vote as “second stage” liberals. I would suggest that the real commonalities here are sociological rather than theological. Those who embrace “progressive” politics also embrace “progressive” theology, while those who embrace “reactionary” theology also embrace “reactionary” politics, and for similar reasons. In both cases, the primary motivation is the embrace of an ideology that trumps both theology and the messiness of genuine politics.

In contradistinction to those who embrace theological and political extremes are those Christians who take their historic catholic and evangelical theology seriously and often find themselves frustrated by the ideological demand that one embrace either “second stage” or “fifth stage” liberalism, recognizing liberalism for the heretical individualist ideology that it is.

I hope you don’t mind my bringing Koyzis into this discussion, but I think his book provides some real insights here that helps correct the kind of simplistic “liberal” vs. “conservative” “culture wars” thinking that Kilgore seems to fall into.

There is nothing especially “robust” in an ecclesiology centered on religious rituals.