"Conservative theology and conservative politics"

Cranach intends to blog this week about the relationship between conservative theology and conservative politics. My own political conservatism was heavily influenced by an anti-utopian skepticism which seemed to me an inevitable inference from the Christian doctrine of original sin. This should be interesting:

Commenters DavidinNorCal and tODD keep asking why so many conservative Christians think they have to be conservative in politics as well. That's a fair question, a good question. ...[Once] evangelicals were rather more likely to be Democrats. I used to be on the liberal side politically. But after the liberals championed abortion, I stopped believing all of their rhetoric about helping the little guy, wanting peace, crusading for social justice. Abortion is such a monumental injustice, such monstrous violence, such cruelty to little guys, that leftwing social self-righteousness became repellant to me.

Another factor in my becoming a political conservative was my time in Estonia, when it was still under the Soviet Union, and I saw the folly of a state-controlled economy and the oppressiveness of an all-powerful state.

Democrats used to be pro-life, as was just about everybody. If conservative Christians, who once had a home in that party, have been gravitating to the Republicans, it is just as big a question why the militant secularists have gravitated to the Democrats. In fact, I would wager that the latter have far more influence with the Democrats than Christians do with the Republicans. ...

Source: Conservative theology and Conservative politics