Secular Western Liberalism in my sights again...

Secular western liberalism is a species of political thought that consciously rejects religious ideas from public consideration. It argues that for peaceful human cohabitation a truce needs to be achieved between conflicting visions of human flourishing.

Postmodern critiques of secular western liberalism expose its weaknesses, especially in the areas of epistemology and anthropology. Lyotard and Foucault have uncovered the hidden metaphysical, even theological, commitments of liberalism, suggesting that its appeal to universal or rational concepts is less compelling than at first glance. However, the postmoderns were themselves guilty of some problematic arguments...

Secular western liberalism trespasses frequently beyond the boundaries of the role of ‘contributing to a social order less unjust’. At least in part this is because of the deliberate step liberalism has taken away from divine authority that it might assert its own (covert) theology instead. It would be preferable for liberalism to name its theological commitments; or at least to assert openly its ‘thick’ moral vision and give up the pretence of moral minimalism. Public discussion of preferred theologies and of the telos of human life need not exclude in this way some of the strongest commitments people have (namely, their religious ones); neither would religious people be asked to frame their public discourse according to the theological and/or moral commitments of liberalism. In turn, the theological and moral assertions of secular western liberalism could be properly evaluated, if at least they were made explicit.

What must be heard is a call to the end of the open hostility of contemporary liberal order to Christianity. We can see in liberalism a prodigal child of Christianity: a millennium of Christendom meant that politics in the west has been moulded out of theological clay. We would not assert, for example, that Freedom and Equality are bad ideas in themselves; rather, that without an understanding of them as they were given birth by Christian theology they lack coherence and may become harmful. Christians can support a vision of liberal order that permits people freely to hear and respond to the gospel of God, which itself calls its hearers to deep concern for justice and peace in the present age while at the same time promising a final divine intervention to ‘shatter the spear’. However, the dominant form of liberal order on the contemporary scene is remorselessly secular...