The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege

by Damon Linker

An essential history of the influential men who have spearheaded the movement to erode the wall separating church and state.Beginning as far-left radicals during the 1960s, the theocons in Damon Linker’s book (including Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and George Weigel) gradually transitioned to conservatism when they grew frustrated with the failures of the decade’s revolutionary goals. Linker shows how, starting during the Reagan administration, they worked to forge a Christian alliance between Evangelical Protestants and Conservative Catholics. By injecting the language of faith into political life, this movement appealed to a wide swath of voters and ultimately played a central role in the election of George W. Bush. The Theocons is an absorbing and revelatory look at an ideological crusade that every American needs to know about.

Genres: Politics, Religion, Nonfiction, History, Cultural, Christianity, Sociology

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Damon Linker is a contributing editor for the New Republic and is a Senior Writing Fellow in the Center for Critical Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two children.

Reviews

[Owlseyes]

"It’s becoming clearer every day that Stephen Bannon is the true ideological force behind the Trump administration — and clearer still that the ideology he's pushing is wrapped up with some very radical ideas about the West, Christianity, and Islam."

in:

Trump's theofascist

in:

http://theweek.com/articles/679058/tr...

“I come from a blue-collar, Irish Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union family of Democrats"
in: https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/gr...

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm surprised that the reviews on here for this book aren't great, as I thought it was quite interesting. Linker argues that there's a distinct movement of theoconservatives led by Richard John Neuhaus and associated with teh magazine First Things. Many of these folks started as lefties in the 1960s: opposing the Vietnam War, protesting for racial justice, and trying to apply Catholic social justice teachings. however, they turned hard right from the 70s to the 90s in response to a number of trends: Roe v Wade, the rise in social problems like drugs, crime, and illegitimacy, and the larger right turn of US politics at the time.

By the 1990s, they had developed a philosophy that fused conservative Catholicism and republican politics. They argued that America was essentially a Christian nation (in spite of massive evidence to the contrary, especially the point that the Founders reviled and feared Catholicism) and that by imposing religion on the public square they were restoring America to its true self. They took very far-right positions on issues like gay marriage, abortion, euthanasia, public school religiosity, and other culture war and especially biomedical issues. They reconciled Catholicism with capitalism (in contrast to many of the Church's teachings) and became active supporters of US global hegemony, particularly the Iraq War. They found a kindred spirit in Bush, who drew on them as advisors and members of boards on biomedical issues and seemed to agree with many of their positions. Linker makes a good case that the theocons essentially don't believe in separation of church and state and that if their views became dominant in US society it would mean second-class status for women, LGBT people, secular people, and members of religious minorities.

The most interesting part of this book is Linker's trenchant analysis of the theocons' conflicted and contradictory relationship with democracy. One on hand, they have unsupported faith that the American people agree with them deep down, even though polls show they are way in the extreme on most of these social/moral issues. When they can claim a democratic mandate, they do so, but when popular opinion goes against them they lament the moral decline of the people and instead try to work directly through elite influence or the courts to change policy. When the courts supported the views they wanted, they praised them, but when court decisions went against them, they lamented judicial overreach and "activist judges." They advocated bending the law on numerous occasions, including the Terri Schaivo bill which illegally targeted a single person for legislation. Linker shows how in many instances Neuhaus and other theocons changed their principles to justify their positions, revealing that what this movement cares mainly about isn't persuasion but achieving power so they can impose their views on society.

A few critiques, though: First, Linker writes very long sentences that I sometimes had to read twice. Second, even though I'm quite secular myself, I thought he went a little far in arguing that religious people need to check their beliefs completely when entering the public square. I do think that he's right that the theocons essentially want to impose minority Catholic views on the country, and I also have long believed that religious people need to be able to justify policy positions in non-religious terms. It's not enough for them to say, for example, that their religion teaches them that alcohol should be banned or that an embryo is a full human being. They should be able to justify these claims in ethical, scientific, and best-policy terms to a mostly secular public square where not everyone shares their preconceptions. But there has to be more of a middle ground btw what seems like absolutism on Linker's part (at least in the conclusion of this book) and the borderline theocracy of the theocons.

Nonetheless, this is an interesting book for picking up on a strain of conservatism that I didn't know much about. It would be interesting to follow this strain through to the Trump era, where many Catholics have become Trump backers (the majority of Catholics voted for him) but not as enthusiastically as Protestants, esp evangelicals.

[poier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book in 2025 is an exercise in horror, frustration, and fury. To see how little reactionary points have changed—and metastasized into something uglier, more powerful, and more frightening—over the last half-century is nothing short of astonishing.
It also portends the way conspiracy culture and a thorough denial of reality would come to dominate right-wing thought. The constant dual rhetorical trick of denying reality and history to make them conform to the framework of ideology is something, for sure.
Excellent book. The negative reviews from years ago are pretty funny to read, mostly because they weren’t even wrong, in the main, back then.

[Austin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The packaging and some of the conclusions of this book make it seem a lot more scare-mongering about the Religious Right than most of the book actually is. For example, from the back cover: "Do you believe that the United States should be a Christian Nation? The theocons answer YES....DO YOU?"

But the substance of the book is a history of the (mostly) Catholic side of the religious Right in the United States, particularly the group of people clustered around J. Richard Neuhaus and First Things, up to 2006.

[Hannah Laura Parker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a wild book to read in the 2020s.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good synopsis of how the religious right have gained power in recent years, and how their ridiculous philosophies have morphed over time. The author used to work for one of the more prominent journals that catered to this particular intellectual disposition.

[Tom Dougherty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book. When I hear the term "Religous right" I always think Evangelical/fundamentalist Protestant. Never realized the impact and influence Catholics had on the movement which kind of surprised me as I always thought those two groups didn't really care for each other.

[Angel · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was not a very readable or enjoyable book. Here is what I wrote in my blog back in February of 2007:

[http://itinerantlibrarian.blogspot.co...]