But I think there’s an important difference here as well. For a lot of these people, the “big theological” issues are simply settled.

Tim: I don’t disagree. I’m merely offering some additional data points and positions to refine the argument. But here again, I think we need to think about two factors: (1) many of these people are articulating “orthodoxy” from their perspective, and hence there isn’t a lot of need to examine or prove, in a robust way, core theological issues; (2) the relationship between religion and politics is really very different now then it was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. What would be the point of novel interpretations of Pauline doctrine, let alone Augustine, for the movement? The people they represent are already convinced that Christianity requires them to shape the temporal world, the people who aren’t convinced are unlikely to respond to novel theological arguments.

Ah, I see. Ok, I agree that the comparison between then and now can be overdrawn, but it does seem to me that the public presentation of the politicized American religious right is not very theological. It’s not that it’s not sophisticated in its own way, but I don’t see, for example, a public theology (scripturally focused or otherwise) that makes deep claims about the need for such a strong interest in temporal questions, political questions. I don’t generally see a theologically deep or complex public presentation of the scriptural or theological case for various social positions taken by the politically active right.

The distinction here might be between evangelical religious leaders who are socially conservative but not particularly a part of the highly mobilized and political religious right and the leadership of the politically active religious right–it does seem to me that these two groups are distinct, and that the former are often quite theologically and scripturally oriented.

Maybe I wasn’t clear. I’m suggesting that, in some (but not all) ways, the contrast you draw between modern evangelicals and Reformation-era actors is overdrawn. I also think you underestimate the importance of doctrinal issues to religious conservative elites. First, I’ve done some interviews with such elites for a project I just wrapped, and I found them very sophisticated about theological issues as applied to contemporary cultural concerns. Second, many of these theological issues are downplayed by religious conservatives because of coalitional politics. If you’re trying to build an alliance with conservative Catholics you just don’t talk about certain things; but “Zwinglians” and “Lutherans” were doing the same thing when push-came-to-shove in the 16th century, so I’m not sure you can call this a modern phenomena either.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_06/004138.php

I think you would agree that Drum is precisely the kind of educated general reader that academics should be trying to reach if they are to have an impact on public discourse. While it is a sample of one, I think academics should reflect on whether his reaction is a sign of a near unbridgeable gap between academic notions of quality and those of the general public or an aberration. That question too might be a worthy topic of discussion in the classroom.

My own, non-historian reading of the Reformation is that it is easy to overemphasize the centrality of religious ideas to the political processes that marked the Reformation period. This may have been true of many leaders, but it is not generally the case that most of the ordinary people involved in political contention, warfare, and even iconoclasm were either very clear on the doctrinal issues or acting out of deep theological principles. Thus, for every alliance that faltered over the question of consubstantiation (think of the pre-Schamlkald attempts to form a Protestant alliance in Germany), there was a great deal of activity that drew inspiration from the general ethos of the Reformation (think of the “German Peasants Movement”) or had more to do with the identity-markers created by different confessional activity than with high theology.

Full disclosure: this was the subject of my dissertation. As a political scientist, my reading of historical data can often be inaccurate and is always driven by concerns alien to many historians.