Mark Gavreau Judge reviews Andrew Sullivan's latest book, The Conservative Soul, at Christianity Today. To sum up: Judge doesn't like it. Little wonder. Sullivan calls himself a conservative but he is so only on fiscal issues. He's a libertarian on social matters, and, although he's a Roman Catholic, he's at odds with almost all of the Church's teaching on sex. He's also viscerally contemptuous of the current administration as well as conservative Christians whom he disdainfully refers to as "Christianists".
Judge writes this about the book:
[I]n The Conservative Soul...there is ...tautology, narcissism, and enough moral relativism to light Manhattan for ten years. Sullivan's premise is simple: We just can't know anything for sure. There's no real truth, and anyone who claims otherwise is not really a conservative but rather a fundamentalist. "The essential claim of the fundamentalist is that he knows the truth," Sullivan writes. "The fundamentalist doesn't guess or argue or wonder or question. He doesn't have to. He knows." In opposition stands the true conservative, whose "defining characteristic" is that "he knows he doesn't know."
It should be pointed out that Sullivan has an expansive definition of "fundamentalist". The term as he uses it refers pretty much to anyone who holds to a more conservative theology than he does.
If you're familiar with Sullivan, who is one of the most popular bloggers on the net, you might want to check out the rest of Judge's review at the link.
