How Evangelicals Invented Liberals’ Favorite Legal Doctrine by Matthew Lee Anderson

How Evangelicals Invented Liberals’ Favorite Legal Doctrine by Matthew Lee Anderson

The value of such an account is that it requires a more complicated assessment about who is to blame for various features of our culture war. Describing the progressive Left as the “aggressors” in the culture war has the dual effect of preserving the Religious Right’s purity and establishing its victim status. Yet Compton makes it clear that on at least one of our deepest culture war fronts—theories of constitutional interpretation—matters are far more complicated than that simplistic narrative allows. The idea that the progressive Left invented the doctrine of the living Constitution ex nihilo in the 1920s plays well, but only at the expense of letting our own history and tradition off the hook.

Good cautionary tale to be careful of what you wish for. Christians can be just as guilty as the Left in pursuing Utopia, with the resulting bad effects.