For those interested in the interplay between religion and the state, James Antle’s Reason review of Andy Olree’s book, The Choice Principle, is a must read. The book makes the case for a Christian-libertarian synthesis, in which the most Christian politics is that which best promotes individual choice and limited government—even when those choices create opportunities for sin. This being Reason, Antle agrees, and I tend to concur as well. Still, there are a couple of points in the review to take issue with.

The first is that I think Antle paints too strong a picture of the tensions between religious conservatives and libertarians. He cites Ryan Sager’s book, Andrew Sullivan, and Dick Armey’s criticism of religious conservatives and libertarians who’ve broken ranks with the religious part of the conservative coalition. He then names some prominent religious liberals and suggests that Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee are big-government conservatives to argue that “God and Caesar do seem to have reconciled”—in other words, that a significant number of Christians have embraced big-government after all. But I think he overstates the heat of the feud. The Wallis-led Christian Left is a pretty small movement that can seem larger because it gets a lot of media attention; Andrew Sullivan is widely-read but hardly counts as a movement; and though Brownback and Huckabee have indeed allowed their faith to lead them to support some government programs, their current low standings as candidates for the Republican nomination indicate that they haven’t exactly taken over the Republican party or the conservative movement.As Ross Douthat has pointed out, the leaders of the Christian Right tend to be “down-the-line small-government types.”

Antle also argues that Christians might want to avoid politicizing religion because “excessive identification of Christianity with politics may be repelling more people than it attracts.” He writes:

Consider Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, the two bloggers who left John Edwards’ presidential campaign because of their history of posting comments critical of Christians on their own blogs. Perhaps they would have been hostile to Christianity in any event, but it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that much of their hostility stemmed from conflating the faith with the Republican Party.

This comes awfully close to blaming Christians for the people that hate them. And not to say that one should unthinkingly taunt or provoke someone else, but when the Marcottes of the world spew anti-religious bile, I tend to think it’s their own fault. And, I think, that’s the libertarian response as well: hold people to account for their own actions and words rather than suggest that they were forced into reaction by someone else.

Still, it’s an excellent essay, and I’d urge everyone with interest in the issue to take a look.