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This is a good thread by @DouthatNYT, though I think conflating 'integralism' with an interest in preserving a soft establishment of religion is conceptually confusing given the way the former is explicitly grounded in RC doctrine.
I think it also lends credence to my suspicion that beneath the French/Ahmari debate lies specific differences in how evangelicals and Catholics are interpreting the failure of the 1980-2008 attempt to forge a socon consensus.
Evangelical politics between 1980-2008 were, on one level, indisputably 'integralist.' Yet they were also deeply unhealthy, and indisputably corrosive to the evangelical churches' witness.
Some evangelical leaders have been searching for an alternate political theology, which would be no less socially conservative but would also avoid being reduced to naked pursuits of power predicated on fear and hostility toward various subsectors of American society.
Those so-called (by R.R. Reno) 'respectable evangelicals' largely agree that Trump is a "symptom and not a cause" of what ails America. firstthings.com/web-exclusives…
Only they think the 'cause' includes bad forms of evangelical political theology and practice that partially animated the losses of 1980-2008. Only that doesn't matter to Catholic integralists, who seem only interested in using 'non-respectable' evangelical votes for relevance.
As such, the idea of Catholic post-liberals launching a "counterattack" against liberalism *without* or *against* so-called 'respectable evangelicals' seems to recreate the very problems that helped lead evangelicals (and America) into the mess we're in.
Side note: within those 'respectable evangelicals' there are differences over the role religion should play in politics. French is a minimalist: he fiercely objected to any consideration by evangelicals of Romney's Mormonism in the ballot box.
I actually argued then that while I didn't think evangelicals should weigh his Mormonism, doing so was licit within the norms of a liberal, democratic society. So I'm more of a maximalist than he is, I think.
One final thought: there's a lot I agree with in Reno's essay. I share many of these political and policy aims. firstthings.com/web-exclusives…
And in some ways, it reminds me of an old @michaelbd argument that socons *are* (or, uh, were?) the Republican base. realclearreligion.org/2011/05/17/cro…
Yet while I think this sentence is true, I wonder how it holds together with the next--and what, specifically, Reno thinks socons should be doing and saying toward our neighbours who currently have no interest in sharing that vision of the common good. 
This is why I think the original attempt to relegate civility and decency to secondary political virtues matters, and where worries about theocratic illiberalism arise. Does Reno's suggestion mean democrat *persuasion* on gender identity, etc. (a la the pro-life movement)?
Or does it mean--something else?
Ambiguity breeds unnecessary hostility and division, and hinders constructive disagreement. I wonder whether the lack of specificity on some of these questions has contributed to those among conservatives.
Ambiguity breeds unnecessary hostility and division, and hinders constructive disagreement. I wonder whether the lack of specificity on some of these questions has contributed to those among conservatives.
I missed this @michaelbd piece on the Catholic/evangelical subcurrent to the debate. nationalreview.com/corner/catholi…
I'm not sure I'd frame Frenchian evangelicals as "optimistic," despite their progress. The cynical view would be that a thinner church culture than Catholics among makes evangelicals uniquely dependent upon and committed to the state for their own identity.
In other words: evangelicals *need* America to thrive in a way Catholics might not, and so much more willing to accommodate ourselves to it. (One example: evangelicals don't have annulment/divorce mechanisms, which makes our practice of marriage uniquely dependent on the state.)
There's a sharp contrast in this respect between UK/US evangelicals. UK evangelicals are largely within the CofE, which provides a more robust set of convictions and culture than your standard American baptist or nondenom church.
