The lectures, however, were the highlight. Taylor was brilliant. He spoke of two narratives with the rise of the modern liberal nation-state. One narrative is the end of exclusion and intolerance from the absolutist predecessor. Taylor argued that indeed, there is a truth to this narrative. Yet simultaneously, he argued that their is a second narrative, a darker side, to this narrative. That in the attempt to redraw and organize all around a single political identity of the state, this narrative produces its own version of exclusion, intolerance, and violence. By recognizing this second narrative, Taylor hopes that space may be made for different types of political identities within the state to resist its absolutist political claims. Given, however, the absolutist claims over coercive violence of the modernist liberal state that shows its historical origins in early modern absolutism, I am not sure how capable liberal political theory and practice can change to allow such a genuine multiculturalism that does not work for to produce a single political loyalty (a term I think is much more descriptive than 'identity').

In response, Robert Bellah spoke. Bellah argued that "identities" are never singular, but always multiple. While he argue that this was not against Taylor's thesis, but complementary, the gist seemed to be that liberal states, especially the United States, already has the capacity to ward off the danger against which Taylor rightfully warns. Bellah then turned to the specific history of the United States to argue his point. In so doing, he gave a wonderful Puritan jeremiad. He surprised me by recounting the history of the violent atrocities of the United States. I thought, "Wow; has Hauerwas influenced him so much to give up his commitment to the goodness of civil religion as a type of mainline Niebuhrian liberal Protestantism?" His jeremiad climaxed with discussing the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- interesting in light of the Japanese sponsorship of the event. At this point, Bellah's narrative changed. He cited one group that morally opposed the dropping of the bomb -- the National Council of Churches via the words of, guess who -- Reinhold Neibuhr. He moved to the contemporary scene. Having lost hope in the United States in America, he had now found hope again in the election of a black man with a Muslim middle name to the presidency. The forces of exclusion and violence and nationalism of which Taylor had warned had been overcome by the return to the ideals of the founding fathers and Lincoln (suspension of habeas corpus?) in Obama. The shear messianicity of Obama as the embodiment of the liberal neo-orthodoxy, Niebuhrian mainline Protestantism in Obama promoted by Bellah, with its undercurrent of USA nationalism fascinated me -- particularly in an event sponsored by the Japanese in honor of a Canadian scholar.

More fascinating was the audience's (or did it become a congregation?) response. Taylor's lecture was met by light, polite applause; Bellah's was met with a rigorous, standing ovation (except for some of the Japanese and one PLNU professor). In the luncheon, the conversation by others was not about the brilliance of Taylor's analysis, but Bellah's passion and speech. All I could think that the event mirrored types of the evangelical intellectual responses to the presidency of George W. Bush that this same demographic found so horrible because of its theological zeal. Now that the political hands had moved to the liberal Protestant Neibuhrian realism from the conservative evangelical Protestant Wilsonian idealism, it seems that the liberal Protestant (um, I mean Catholic) have their own messianic hopes inscribed in the Oval Office. Such a version of American civil religion still lives!

If this is indicative of larger cultural movements, it would seem that the decline of mainline Protestant churches, and evangelical churches that can absorb this into their discourse without abandoning their older constituency, will now have the upper hand in the free-market of ecclesial enterprises. Evangelicalism's thirty year coalition with the Republican party will become a detriment; a politically liberal pietistic civil religion will emerge.

For myself, this probably means that I will continue to be perceived as "conservative" rather than "liberal" as I was in the 90s and early 2000s. As committed to the evangelic, catholic, and orthodox faith given to the saints -- and as I age -- it is fascinating to see how the shifting cultural/political movements around me. The task, among swirling manifestations of the same civil religion, is to keep going in unity, constancy, and peace.