Liberals and Conservatives, Religious and Political: A Conjuncture of Modern History

In the twentieth century, religious and political liberalism have generally beencongruent, as were religious and political conservatism, along the dimension of universalism and particu-larism. In recent years the terminology has grown confused, when communists in the ex-Soviet re,~on are described as conservatives, and proponents both of market capitalism and of ethnic nationalism are described as liberals. Changes in content of liberalism and conservatism are also found in religious history. The issue of married priests today is considered to be a liberal reform within Catholicism; whereas in the twelfth century, reformers attacked married priests as corruption and abuse; at the Protestant Reformation, it was presented as church reform to abolish clerical celibacy. The rhetorical contrast liberallconservative ties the concepts to the mobilization of conflict irrespective of its content. Our familiar congruence of liberalism ancl conservatism in religion and politics is historically specific; t emerged at the exhaustion of the religious wars in the late seventeenth century, and developed along with secularization into the early twentieth century. As particularism along ethnic and ge,uter lines becomes a major grounds of mobilization in the late twentieth century, the classic liberal/conservative contrast appears to be eroding.