Series: Jonathan Rauch and the Liberal Seduction of Christianity (4 parts)

Part II: Rauch “Aligns” Christianity with Liberalism

In Part I, we saw that Jonathan Rauch, an openly “gay” and atheist liberal and homosexual marriage advocate who had long found Christianity irrational and ridiculous, came eventually to understand that secular liberalism could not by itself provide all the moral motivations needed to sustain itself. While Rauch himself has no use for Christianity in framing his own understanding of the meaning of life, he concluded that most people need some vision of higher truth and purpose beyond anything in liberalism’s range of vision. For this reason, he proposes in this book (Crosspurposes) that Christianity can provide that needed vision, but only if it sets aside (at least for political purposes) all beliefs that run counter in practice to liberalism’s secular vision. Without exactly espousing the scientific and rationalist understanding of reality that supports Rauch’s own liberalism, Christians, he argues, ought to “align” themselves with liberalism in order to provide it with the moral fou…