Neocon Liberation Theology

Great article by Daniel Larison from Nov. 06 and the paleocon journal, The American Conservative.

If we believe President Bush, God also has a sort of program of earthly liberation. It is an attempt to immanentize the spiritual liberty of Christians as political liberty, while at the same time stripping this liberty of any association with revelation. It is what political philosopher and philosopher of history Eric Voegelin would have called a modern gnostic error. This idea is injurious to the deliberative nature of republican government and has inspired the justification of revolutionary violence in a questionable cause in Iraq.

Never really thought of how Bush’s political-economic worldview is in a way cut from the same theological cloth as Marxist liberation theology. Both reduce the work of the Creator to the expansion of political and economic liberties. Both usurp the name of God for their essentially materialist liberationist agenda. Yet another reason to reject liberation theology. The Right and the Left keep forgetting that they're long-lost twins. I still hear people on the Left wax fecklessly about the Magisterium's rejection of liberation theology as close-minded and backward.