Mission Accomplished: Catholic Integralism as Prophetic Violence

Recent work on U.S. antiliberal Christian politics has emphasized Christian nationalism, a movement often depicted as growing from Evangelical and ministerial contexts. This presentation (1) traces and (2) analyzes another trend in U.S. Christian antiliberalism, one with a unique view of the nation’s future: Catholic integralism. Tracing this trend reveals that integralism has uniquely thrived primarily in Catholic academic and political contexts. I show how it has spread through elite institutions within the conservative intellectual movement—culminating in an integralist becoming the Vice President of the United States. In analyzing integralism, I argue that its contribution to politics is a self-authorizing political theology of prophetic violence. By reading integralists' own words, I show that integralism combines Carl Schmitt and a branch of Thomism to formulate a politics that licenses violence not only against existential threats, but any discursive opponents to the conceptual moral order that must come to be.