Truly Radical Christianity?

From Craig Carter's blog:

"I have come to believe that the only truly radical (getting to the roots) way of being a Christian in late modernity is to embrace a pre-modern conservatism that challenges all forms of liberalism (left liberalism & neo-conservativism alike) by challenging the fundamental, bedrock assumption of modernity common to all strands of modernity and postmodernity, which is the priority of the autonomous self. True conservativism hearkens back to a time before the priority of the autonomous self, a time when family was fundamental, civil society was robust, tradition was sacred and the state was limited. It does not want to go back to that time (which is impossible), but it does want to mine that tradition for resources that can help us rebuild a church that has been decimated by modernity.

What resources does it offer? It offers such treasures as a metaphysics of a universe in motion moved by the love of God (C. S. Lewis, John Milbank), virtue ethics (A. MacIntyre, S. Pinckears), proper confidence in reason's ability to know truth (St. Thomas Aquinas, Benedict XVI) and a way of reading Scripture for its spiritual meaning (H. de Lubac). These are just the examples that come to mind first."

Apparently Carter was a "Yoderian" (see his book Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective) before undergoing a conversion to "pre-modern conservatism." Seeing the names he associates his position with, it makes me wonder how much this position has in common with the people at Front Porch Republic, especially this post: Letter from a Traditional Conservative. In this article, a similar argument is made regarding modern (enlightenment) presuppositions about the atomistic individual:

Contemporary American-style conservatism and liberalism are merely two faces of that intelligible beast, (Eighteenth Century) Classical Liberalism. Its vision says the substantive unit or entity in politics is strictly the individual, and the freedom of the individual is the primary good after which society and government seek. Since, therefore, the term “society” indicates nothing more than a numerical aggregate of the individuals in a given area, then the only purpose of government must be to defend the potentially infinite number of “private” interests of these loosely gathered individual freedom-maximizers...

They are both simply expressions of the basic tenets of bourgeois classical liberalism. Generally, when someone says, “I’m conservative on some issues and liberal on others,” what he really means is that he is just a more consistent classical liberal than American-style conservatives and liberals, i.e. he has traced out more fully the consequences of the individual as the sole entity in politics and the individual’s protected freedom as its end.

I have often felt like I don't fit into either of the classic "liberal" or "conservative" camps, and have been reluctant to identify myself with any group. Increasingly, however, I find that my positions tend to be much more firmly rooted in a protest against enlightenment individualism - which can often seem to be closer to the classic "conservative" side. But this new category, whether it is called "Traditional" or "Pre-modern" conservatism, is MUCH closer to what I would consider my own position and (rightly) avoids the mistakes of enlightenment individualism.

I think this position is often labeld as "agrarianism" or "communitarianism," on such people as Stanley Hauerwas and Wendell Berry (and others like them). I have had a hard time (and I recognize the error in even attempting this) figuring out whether people like Berry and Hauerwas are "liberal" or "conservative." I read one thing and am convinced one way, only to turn the page and be baffled at the apparent juxtaposition of contrary opinions scattered throught their writings. But the difficulty in identifying where they stand on the liberal/conservative spectrum is difficulty precisely because they reject the very categories being used.

I think I will do the same.