For much of our national history, our religious differences, important as they are, co-existed with a widespread agreement that there was a transcendent good beyond the goods of this world, including the good of the political community and about the kind of life that was constitutive of temporal happiness and of our ultimate end. This acceptance of a transcendent good made civil political disagreement possible, and its loss has led to a moralization and, consequently, to an absolutization of politics.
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The roots of our polarization
V. Bradley Lewis, NC Register
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
For much of our national history, our religious differences, important as they are, co-existed with a widespread agreement that there was a transcendent good beyond the goods of this world, including the good of the political community and about the kind of life that was constitutive of temporal happiness and of our ultimate end. This acceptance of a transcendent good made civil political disagreement possible, and its loss has led to a moralization and, consequently, to an absolutization of politics.