Moreland on Liberalism and Christianity

Michael Moreland (Villanova) has posted on SSRN a new paper, "Contingency and Contestation in Liberalism and Christianity) which discusses (among other things) the presentations at a conference last fall at Notre Dame Law School on Liberalism and Christianity.  Prawfs participating included Amy Sepinwell, Andy Koppelman, Brandon Paradise, Kathleen Brady, Steven Smith, and Nathan Chapman.  Also discussed are recent works by Adrian Vermeule and Patrick Deneen.  Here's Michael's abstract:

The essays in this Symposium engage in recurring sets of issues, and here I wish to highlight four of them: (1) the relationship between liberalism and theological traditions; (2) the historically contingent and contested accounts of how liberalism and Christianity have developed over centuries in a relationship that has varied from conciliatory to hostile and what implications that account has for the history of ideas; (3) debates in legal scholarship that are illuminated by posing broader questions about liberalism, Christianity, and constitutionalism, and in particular the relationship of liberalism to different social forms, including religious institutions; (4) the renewed interest in the relationship between liberalism and Christianity in light of a new generation of critics of liberalism, whether Catholic integralists or other types of anti-liberalism, and the question—posed forcefully at the end of Steven Smith’s paper—of if not liberalism, then what else?

Michael does, I think, a great job of capturing the richness of the conversation.  [I presented at the symposium, but didn't (mea culpa!) produce a law-review article.  Here is a short version of my presentation, "Why Liberalism and Constitutionalism Need Christianity."]