Liberalism in search of vision: responding to the lost connection between lifestyle and policy with Christians on the Left as a case study

According to post-liberal political theory, liberalism has undermined shared ideas of the good by valorising choice as the only good. The result is that there is no shared vision by which to challenge forces of instrumentalisation. Yet post-liberal theory tends to ground its critique in liberal theory, without sufficiently anchoring arguments in what Jeffrey Alexander has called ‘proximate actors and agencies’; that is, in this case, political institutions and processes. In order to do this, the paper offers a slightly alternative genealogy of liberal political theory to that ordinarily provided by post-liberals. It focuses on political hypocrisy: the notion that there is one rule for the people and another for rulers. It then critically anchors this genealogy in UK political institutions and processes, which it demonstrates tend to undermine a connection between policy and lifestyle. Finally, the paper ethnographically explores a possible response offered by one organisation in the UK: Christians on the Left.