Christianity

Historical scholarship and historically informed political reflection on Christian political thought has become enmeshed in the debate over liberalism, postliberalism, and Christian perspectives on contemporary politics. This chapter considers two strands in recent historical scholarship and historically-based Christian political theory. The first, the liberal narrative, explores the Christian roots of liberal democracy or ideas and institutions associated with modern political thought such as individualism and individual rights, equality, consent, constitutionalism, rule of law, religious tolerance, and religious freedom. The second, ressourcement, approaches Christian political thought as a lost preliberal heritage offering resources for a renewed moral, spiritual, and civic order. Mixed into the discussion are works by scholars I treat as pure historians or students of political thought with whom the liberal narrative and ressourcement proponents engage. In this chapter, I take each strand in turn, reflecting on exemplary contributions and the insights and further questions they leave in their wake. Historians have illuminated the premodern, preliberal roots of institutions and values often considered distinctive of modern constitutional democracy. Yet they also reveal the limits of simple stories of continuity between ancient and medieval Christian political thought and the institutions and liberal institutions and values of our own day. One such limitation has to do with the centrality of the church in Christian political thought.