I think not...

First off, yes, I like the sound of this. The discussion that is -- not Christendom.

"The only rule for this forum would be, that you should do your best to avoid shanghaiing the conversations into the usual debates over our religious doctrines, except insofar as the doctrine and practices etc. etc. obtain to the main idea."

Ahhhh, the perennial dream of the aspiring ecumenist. If this forum is to be at all fruitful, I'm afraid these "usual debates over our religious doctrines" (or lack thereof) will inevitably become central to our conversation. Matthew, my friend, you not only begin by begging the question ("if there's any temporal political hope for the world, I've an inkling that it lies in a Restoration of Christendom" -- or perhaps this was just your opening statement, in which case, fair enough), you move past that to suggest that to have a debate over doctrinal differences would be to shanghai the conversation. I disagree. Here is a prediction -- one which I will do my part to turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy: this is going to be a revisitation of St. Augustine of Hippo's The City of God. If it's not, then we're none of us doing our homework. Bring on the pugnacious doctrinal disputation. It's the only way we're going to get anywhere, and it will be a much more interesting conversation.

Here's my opening statement, which I will gladly paste into the blog which Mr. Taylor proposes to construct:

The Restoration of Christendom is a terrible idea. Moreover, "temporal political hope for the world" is an oxymoron, red herring, chimera and in all other ways a non-thing. Politics doesn't give you hope; it gives you a modest degree of order. It doesn't eliminate evils which were once "tolerated"; it embodies God's righteous law, and it exists for the benefit and chastisement of Christian and heathen alike. There is an evil worse than lechery and sodomy which government cannot eliminate: Unbelief. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Apostasy. Impenitence. Fortunately, the state's office is secular, mundane, and not concerned with salvation. Perhaps you're saying that it's not, Matthew. Perhaps (and I suspect this is more than likely) you disagree with the distinction which St. Augustine drew between the City of God and the City of Man, a distinction which the Augsburg confessors reiterated, though it has ever been rather alien to the state church of England.

State church -- there's another chimera, a leaden veil under which the Bride of Christ has been able to endure from place to place and time to time, although barely. It is an unholy, toxic alliance in which the Bride of Christ is "betrothed unto another," to borrow Donne's immortal line, longing to be divorced and untied. There are two cities in tension on this earthly plane; man dwells in two kingdoms. There will always be two, until our Lord returns. There will never be one. I suggest that we stop pining for the secular culture to express or exhibit the piety and holiness of living we expect in and amongst the members of the Body of Christ. The Church is culture. The family, moreover, is culture. Secular culture -- there's another oxymoron. The niceties of the secular world, and there are many, to be sure, should be denoted by a different word, one with a more appropriate etymology. Perhaps we just need to think of two cultures, as well. That's probably better. In positing two kingdoms and two cultures, I'm not positing some sort of Manichean position -- quite the opposite. It the Manichean who posits endless war between the Two Cities, identifying all that is not sacred as necessarily profane and initiating all manner of utopian, progressive schemes to make the two realms one. Christian monism, I suppose.

I'm sure subsequent discussion will bear out the differences in these two visions ever further. These are the differences which I see, however, and to try to avoid discussing them would be unwise, and more likely, absurd.

(Reposted from email. Unedited. Even though I really, really wanted to polish what I said.)