Liberalism: A Religious-Dependent Faith

Contemporary liberalism, both its American variant as well as its classical and European cousins,\u27 is often thought of as a secular political philosophy with little in common with various religious faiths, least of all Christianity. Indeed, many of liberalism\u27s most famous adherents, past and present, have taken a certain pride in distancing themselves from Christianity, most especially and perversely, Roman Catholicism.\u27 Yet, such views may be mistaken in having ignored the fundamentally faithbased grounding of contemporary liberalism: first, its optimistic metaphysics makes it possible for its adherents to ignore human sin and to assume that individual self-love and corporate other-love form a natural identity; and second, liberalism\u27s empirically empty defense of human equality elevates all human beings regardless of individual merit to equal dignity while rendering all other species subordinate, as means not ends.\u27 Without assuming a loving God, indeed in this case a Christian God who maintains an orderly universe and loves equally that which he has created in His own image, as materialists have been pointing out for centuries, such notions should collapse as indefensible absurdities.\u2