Jason Bivins comments on Jon Shields’s new book, Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right, at Religion in American History:
Just to respond to Paul’s mention of my recent book in his post, what strikes me on my incomplete engagement with Shields’ work is that the sorts of “democratic virtues” he’s out to uncover in a *certain* sector of NCR politicking aren’t necessarily inconsistent with the political religions of fear. Rather, what seems to be most salient about post-1960s conservative Christianities in the U.S. is their very polymorphousness, the way in which certain features of liberalism are used against other features, or the way in which doomy declension narratives can necessitate (even demand) the kinds of engagement Shields is describing.
What fascinates me is not just that there exists in the NCR an ethos of civic engagement; there is a rich literature which acknowledges this (Nomi Stolzenberg, Jeff Spinner-Halev, even my own Fracture of Good Order, and others) and to which Shields is making an important and distinctive contribution. Rather, what compels me are the modes of coexistence between the participatory impulse and its more frightful counterpart, and how they’re strategically (selectively) framed. Here, the world is doomed and cannot be reshaped; elsewhere, a reformist spirit is championed. Here we encounter strident intolerance; there we hear references to MLK and “just getting a seat at the table.” Both orientations and both discourses exist simultaneously in these cultures, at least from where I sit and write, and the way they’re given emphasis and deployed is where the action is. Just my two cents.
Read Bivins’ full comment here.