One of the things roiling underneath the recent controversies among conservatives about the place of classical liberalism in our tradition is a religious difference. And I just want to venture a thought.
The predominant anti-liberal voices on the right are traditionalist Catholics. There is a tradition of anti-liberal thought in the Catholic Church that is as old as modernity. The prominent pro-classical liberal voices are Evangelical Protestants, some confessional Protestants, and agnostics. And I wonder if a great deal of the attitude toward the present isn't informed by the political and theological trends in these religious bodies.
From the mid-century to now, the Evangelical movement in America has seen phenomenal growth, pulling in people from fundamentalist, mainline, and Catholic churches. Denominations closely associated with it like the Southern Baptist Convention have grown vastly more conservative and even reversed their positions on legal abortion. In their theological controversies, traditional orthodoxy has generally been ascendant. Defenders of a traditional Christian view of God's Providence handily defeated the advocates of open theism in 2004
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