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interesting premise for a thread, ustwo.
i am not sure that i see the split you are arguing for, primarily because i am not sure of the sequence you presuppose (type of religious affiliation->political views; political views->type of religious affiliation). trying to think about the op in these terms gets really fuzzed out really quickly--too may unspoken variables, and an unclear set of questions to guide thinking.
perhaps the question is more about how a given political ideology reframes one's conceptions of religion. if this more what you are asking, then i can at least see the opposition.
in general, i think the schema in the op to be far too simple.
for example: augustine wrote somewhere (i think in the confessions, but i could be wrong) that the beauty of christianity as he saw it was in its complexity, its multiple layers, which enabled believers to find different churches for themselves through the process of fashioning different types and degrees of engagement. some folk might be more inclined toward theology, others toward a more immediate kind of experience, etc.
i think this is still accurate.
i guess that would make augustine a liberal, going by the grid from the op. this makes no sense, really, in historical terms.
thinking about it more, tho: maybe another way to think about this question:
the population that is most consistently mobilized by the right these days is fundamentalist protestant--while there would be considerable variation amongst particular groups about belief (e.g. charismatic or not, etc.), what these denominations have in common is a belief in the "literal interpretation of the bible"
maybe this is a place to start: the literal interpretation school holds that the kind james version of the bible is the inspired word of god.
its meaning, then, would be immanent--that is present directly in the text, requiring no significant adjustment or interpretation.
if you wanted to correlate this to a political position, it seems to me that what would link the two is a fear of distance or a fear of representation (this is obviously not a neutral description, but i am short of time so i'll leave it)
order is present in the text, as it is in the world: this order is divinely inspired and so is immutable.
one does not make meanings, one finds them--they have always been there.
this position maps directly on to conservative politics in general in its assumption that the existing order is a variant of a natural order (a variant in that it is made by fallen human being)---in cases where these folk (generic term) woudl find themselves in political opposition, this logic would be reversed: the existing order has fallen away and needs to be restored it a prior, more divinely sanctioned arrangement.
this would link to a particular conception of tradition--i think ustwo outlines some important features of it above--but i would add that the function of tradition in this context is twofold: it keeps history from moving around too much, and functions as a source for accumulated huamn insight into the divinely inspired order of the world.
other positions to the "left" would see meanings as more human creations, embedded in arguments about the nature of the world. the relation of texts like the bble to the world would be much more variable--some folk might see biblical texts are normative rather than descriptive--others might see the relation as more distant and/or complex still.
argh..i have to go: i'll leave this half finished for the moment and maybe get back to it later.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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