Andrew Stuttaford has usefully redirected our conversation about religion and conservatism. Previously we were considering the proposition that conservatives, by asserting that only religious people can behave morally and otherwise pushing religion too hard, had alienated irreligious conservatives and thus “crippl[ed]” themselves. Rather than advance this implausible set of ideas, Stuttaford suggests that the conservative movement’s increased religiosity has reduced conservatives’ ability to achieve one of their most important goals: a reduction in the size and scope of government. If so, that would mean that the movement toward religious conservatism had crippled, or at least, weakened, conservatism in a different and deeper way than merely by hurting Republican politicians.

Andrew writes that “it’s easy to discern a strain of conservatism emerging (and within the GOP and the administration it has emerged a long way) that more resembles European Christian Democracy (or, in its more robust forms, Gaullism) than the small government, skeptical, ‘leave me alone’ conservatism that brought so many into the fold and which (for what it’s worth) I, for one, prefer.”

I’m not persuaded that Republicans are more statist than they were, say, 15 years ago. But let’s assume for the sake of argument that Republicans have simultaneously become more religious-conservative and less anti-statist. What’s the causal relationship here? To the extent the assumption is true, I think the best explanation is that that’s where the votes were. Clearly there are some people who have voted Republican because of same-sex marriage but wouldn’t vote Republican because of the minimum wage. The party’s increased religiosity would have set back limited government only if it were possible to assemble some other majority coalition that would have shrunk the government (or restrained its growth). I’m skeptical on that front.

It may also be worth noting that the closest analogue to Gaullism on the American Right in recent years was (is?) “national greatness conservatism,” which its defenders argued represented a movement “from the cross to the flag.” Its leading political champion is not generally considered a religious conservative.