Review of Michael R. J. Bonner’s “The Crisis of Liberalism: The Origin and Destiny of Freedom”

Ours is a season of disenchantment with liberalism, much of it stemming from Christian factions and sources. Ancient ideas have returned with force, and find themselves increasingly championed in the halls of the great and the good. There are concerns over Catholic integralists and Protestant Christian nationalists threatening the democratic project, as post-liberal discourses gain widespread popularity. What these movements represent, collectively, is a contemporary romantic response to the spiritual lacunae and existential ennui of secular modernity, where religion has been relegated to the private sphere and drowned out by a panoply of competing visions, obligations, duties, and worldviews. As Michael Sleet points out, post-liberals conflate political liberalism with the broader cultural, social, and economic ailments of modernity (or post-modernity) itself, seeking top-down political solutions to the deprecations of disenchantment. 

Post-liberal thinkers like Patrick Deneen begin their argument from a deeper place of metaphysics; the Hobbesian social contract is an historical aberration, and its artificially-constructed anthropology leads necessarily to the destruction of traditional communities and modes of human flourishing, replacing them with decadent libertinism. One should therefore seek to overthrow the status quo, building in its place a new polity rooted in the ancient principles of classical virtue and the “common good.” This is, essentially, normative and prescriptive political theology. It is a language and a discourse deeply uncomfortable for today’s cognoscenti, well-versed in quantitative, technical measurements of social or economic progress, but functionally illiterate in anything substantively philosophical. Contemporary academic and polemical critiques of the new turn in political theology are therefore, perhaps predictably, largely missing the point. When critics stress the threat to pluralistic democracy posed by integralist resurrections of throne and altar imaginaries, this is neither here nor there. By definition, post-liberals reject the necessity of the liberal social contract (indeed, they seek to overcome its perceived spiritual limitations), and so pathic appeals to its sacrosanct status are tautological and fall on deaf ears. 

This speaks to a deeper problem within the Anglo-American liberal intellectual tradition: the general absence of recourse to metaphysics, and the almost axiomatic reliance upon utilitarian, materialist, rational choice, and economic arguments grounded in mere social stability and good governance. The contemporary liberal imagination largely begins and ends with methodological and epistemic individualism as a matter of Rawlsian social justice and tolerance; footnotes to Voltaire’s image of each man cultivating his own private garden. But it never claims that planting and growing virtue amidst the grassy lawns of each man’s moated castle is a privileged path to pursuing the “good life.” Nor that it is even possible to do so fully in conditions of epistemic relativism  and social atomism (even its most strident apologias have always acknowledged the bittersweet apogee of a liberalism triumphant that offers material comfort alongside existentially haunted “last men”). Liberal democracy then becomes an unfortunate compromise, a “best of all possible worlds”, or “the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried.” There is nothing heroic, romantic, or emotionally appealing about such a vision (which is why, in every generation, rebellious youth are drawn to those who promise thymos instead; from Heidegger, Maurras, Schmitt, and Eliot, to today’s integralists). Recognizing this challenge, the likes of Samuel Moyn and Alexander Lefebvre have tried to articulate a liberal conception of the “good society” (shared in popular culture, or else a pre-Cold War concern with progress). But these are equally shallow, ceding ground to post-liberal thought by failing to engage with the rich pre-modern, classical, and Christian conceptions of virtue that are so central to the post-liberal arsenal. 

An ambitious new book flips the script on its head. In The Crisis of Liberalism: The Origin and Destiny of Freedom, Michael R. J. Bonner engages post-liberals on their own turf: the realm of Christian metaphysics, first principles, and anthropology, from which the liberal polity historically emerged. Bonner’s work is chiefly a revisionist intellectual history, tracing the Western Christian roots of our liberal thought world, upturning conventional platitudes in political theory. Liberalism is presented as the natural outgrowth of Christian civilization (in particular, the Middle Ages), not, as is claimed by the pre-eminent Whig historiography, the product of a post-Enlightenment rejection of that inheritance. This is a highly original and compelling reconstruction; in its scope, erudition, and thematic content, Bonner’s text is comparable to Tom Holland’s magisterial Dominion (Basics Books, 2019), from which he draws inspiration. 

Bonner begins in the spirit of Virgil, guiding readers through a corpus of long-dead and long-forgotten thinkers who have shaped what he calls the five axioms of the contemporary liberal Lebenswelt. This first part of the text is where Bonner truly shines as a historian, drawing links between, for example: liberal egalitarianism and the Imitatio Christi (c. 1418-1427); the notion of free will and Peter John Olivi (1248-98); methodological individualism and Peter Abelard (1079-1142); the separation of Church and state and the pontificate of Leo IX (1049-54); as well as the liberal teleology of social progress and Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135-1202). That the roots of modern thought can be found within Christendom is not altogether novel; variations of this thesis are found in the historiography of Michael Allen Gillespie—whom Bonner draws from extensively in his insights on free will, individualism, and nominalist philosophers John Scotus Eriugena (815-77) and William of Ockham (1287-1347)—as well as the recent scholarship of Charles Taylor and Brad Gregory. Uniquely, however, Bonner treats the twilight days of the Early Middle Ages and later, the High Middle Ages—the emergence of Franciscan spirituality, the foundation of the monastery at Cluny (what he calls “Cluniac libertarianism”), the pontificate of Gregory VII (1073-1085), the “peace movements” of the 10^th and 11^th centuries, and the eschatological fervor of the First Crusade—as the decisive era during which many of the axioms of liberalism took hold. And unlike the aforementioned scholars, Bonner does not see the Reformation as a period of significant rupture with the past; as he ably demonstrates, the Western freedom tradition was already so ingrained in intellectual discourses that Reformation and later Enlightenment thinkers deployed these concepts as self-evident truths, without much in the way of justification. 

There is much here in rich ferment for future scholars in these early chapters (which are, somewhat regrettably, rather pithy, but this is a scholarly work intended for a wider audience, and one which covers immense ground). Consider, for example, Bonner’s most original insights on the Franciscan roots of egalitarianism. One could develop these further and point to the influence of Medieval literature, architecture and art in popularizing universalist moral themes. The vanitas paintings, Danse Macabre, Ars Moriendi, and “The Three Dead and the Three Living” motifs (variations on the memento mori theme), so widespread at the time, were a powerful rejoinder to social inequality that doubtlessly curbed the worst excesses of mad kings and power-drunk aristocrats. In a liberal society that gives us the likes of Jeffrey Epstein, one wonders whether we have moved backwards in our understanding of universal human dignity on this side of the grave.  

Bonner’s narrative reaches a crescendo with two remarkable chapters which (re)consider the modern era. Here, he offers a normative critique of the conventional liberal canon, rooted in the Böckenförde Dilemma. In short, liberalism—despite its pretences towards value neutrality—presents a set of normative prescriptions for the good and just polity that rely on pre-existing value judgments, themselves extra-liberal in origin. These pre-existing values, as demonstrated in the preceding chapters, are essentially theological. Bonner methodically deconstructs every attempt to replace the theological basis of liberalism with ersatz ideologies, anthropologies and quasi-religions (across Descartes, Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, Bentham, Comte, Mill, and Popper), or else with circular reasoning (in Hume, Kant, and Rawls), and finds them wanting. These chapters are masterworks of synthesis, logical deconstruction, and polemic; they also manage to give us a thorough critique of neoliberalism (Mises and Hayek), as well as a succinct scholarly treatment of Cold War liberalism and its aftermath. Ultimately, Bonner finds that it is liberalism’s gradual and later wholescale rejection of its Christian parentage that has brought about its current malaise. 

A provocative thesis such as this would easily fall apart in the hands of a less-skilled writer and historian. But Bonner’s longue durée analysis is meticulously documented, with a mastery of the source material, and presented in a thoroughly accessible style. Moreover, his conclusions are self-evident for those with eyes to truly see. One has merely to look beyond the castle walls to see the rise of distinct “civilizational states” like China, Russia, India, and Iran, each with a radically antithetical vision of Kallipolis, for proof that liberal ideals are contingent upon pre-existing sociocultural foundations, and that they do not necessarily come naturally (or easily). Ours is a time of competing normative political theologies and mythologies, with statesmen employing religious and ideological motifs to justify geopolitical interventions. In Russia, Putin and his advisors launched a war with Ukraine to retake Kyiv as the spiritual center of the Russkiy Mir (Russian world). In India, radical elements within the Hindu nationalist movement (Hindutva) seek to replace the world’s largest secular constitutional democracy with an ethnonationalist vision of a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation). For decades, a unique strain of Shi’a apocalyptic mythology has fostered and fed the regional ambitions of the Islamic Republic of Iran. While in China, a new vision of global hegemony rooted in ancient notions of tianxia is proffered, explicitly, as an illiberal “counter cosmopolitanism” against the liberal Pax Americana. 

In Bonner’s view, if the “law of liberty” (James 1:25, 2:12) is to triumph against its contenders abroad (and those closer to home), it must once again draw from the rich Christian sources and themes that midwifed its birth and nourished its spread. Bonner points to the great historical struggles against slavery, white supremacy, apartheid, and Soviet totalitarianism—led by William Wilberforce, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and St. John Paul II—all of which drew from liberalism’s deeper Christian wellspring for rhetorical force. Today’s liberal literati hold their nose at the stench of anything remotely Christian, and do so at their peril. Nobody is going to bat for liberalism as a “way of life” if the best it can offer is Seinfeld. 

The conclusion of Bonner’s work is the thinnest part of an otherwise pregnant text; he briefly plays around with various notions for how we might seek out a rejuvenated theological basis for liberalism, such as explicit constitutional principles, or else a renewed emphasis on communitarian lifestyles. But he admits, readily, that this seems an entirely anachronistic project, far removed from today’s hegemonic discourses, and he leaves the bulk of the task to others. Bonner speculates hopefully that America’s first Pope, Leo XIV, might play a role in reconciling Christianity with liberalism. This strikes me as a move in the right direction. What is needed today is the articulation of a contemporary Christian spirituality of freedom, one that speaks the language of today’s believers and acknowledges their challenges head-on. Such a spirituality would reject absolutist claims to primacy over the public square, not on the basis of their instrumental challenge to pluralistic democracy, but on spiritual and theological grounds themselves. Perhaps in such a framing, the solitary cultivation of one’s spiritual garden, amidst the very real trials of a neoliberal economy and a post-modern social milieu, becomes a theological good in and of itself. Is that itself not a kind of Christian heroism and witness? After all, nothing ever worth doing comes easily. This gargantuan task will be primarily a philosophical and theological enterprise, and—if it is to retain any influence—must come from religious leaders. But as always, it helps to stand on the shoulders of giants. One would be hard-pressed to find a more insightful and original historical overview of the ancient Christian sources of contemporary liberal thought than Bonner’s text.