Liberal pluralism, postliberal genealogies and theological history

The postliberal genealogies of John Milbank, Brad Gregory, and Patrick Deneen refuse to disaggregate liberalism and thus denounce it wholesale. Likewise, these narratives are not sufficiently ambivalent in describing both modern liberalism and pre-modern politics. I respond to these narratives by disaggregating liberalism into various forms. I note how a certain version of political liberalism, rooted in the freedom of conscience, has important precedents in pre-modern Christianity. In view of this, I defend the plausibility of a historical interpretation positing a more positive, yet nonetheless ambivalent relation between important trends in Christianity and versions of modern liberalism, thereby calling into question the indiscriminate denunciation of liberalism posited as the ‘moral’ of these postliberal narratives.