Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will, who left the Republican Party roughly a decade ago in protest of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, has not softened his stance since. In a column published in late September, Will directs his criticism at MAGA Christians — Vice President JD Vance among them — arguing that they resemble, in several respects, the "socialists" they condemn. That the critique comes from one of the right's most established voices — and targets the religious-political worldview of the sitting vice president — underscores an argument inside American conservatism itself over how far Christian doctrine should reach into law and governance.

"Undeterred by the axiom that there can be indecent exposure of the mind as well as the body," the 85-year-old Will writes in the Post, "the Democratic Socialists of America candidly announce their agenda. Religious 'integralists' should be similarly explicit. DSAers want to scrap the Constitution in order to facilitate confiscating wealth, private property and other impediments to government-enforced equality and social perfection. Christian integralists, who are disproportionately Catholic, are devout and determined to make the nation more so. They would enliven politics if they would specify the measures they advocate to, as they mistakenly say, return America to being a 'Christian nation.'"

Many MAGA Christians are fundamentalist Protestant evangelicals, but Vance — who converted to Catholicism in 2019 — is cited by Will as a prime example of an "integralist."

"Integralists want to integrate spiritual and temporal (government) power, subordinating the latter to the former," Will argues. "Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule, the most intellectually interesting integralist, opposes 'the relentless expansion of individualistic autonomy,' and those who are 'enslaved to the original meaning of the Constitution.' Integralists have no 'horror of political domination and hierarchy' because law — government — must be 'parental, a wise teacher and an inculcator of good habits.'"

Will continues: "Vermeule's constitutionalism aims not to 'protect liberty' as 'an end in itself,' because 'constraints on power are good only derivatively,' by serving the integralist agenda, which requires robust parental government. Government should 'direct' individuals and society toward virtuous living through 'respect for the authority of rule and of rulers; respect for the hierarchies needed for society to function.' Well."

The references tap into a live debate within conservative legal thought: Vermeule has advanced what he calls "common good constitutionalism," an approach that has drawn attention — and pushback — in legal circles in recent years by staking ground explicitly against originalism, the interpretive method long favored on the legal right.

According to Will, "integralist" Christianity runs counter to "libertarian" principles, and he contends that integralists wrongly describe America's founding.

"Integralists who speak, as Vance does, of 'the Christian foundation of this country,' are baptizing the Founders without their permission," Will writes. "The six most important — Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton — held, tepidly, various flavors of deism, which says a clockmaker deity got the universe going, then His attention wandered. The six tended toward unitarianism, the watery belief that there is at most one God. Integralists, like socialists, promise political transformations that will achieve salvation for our fallen world. Jesus said, 'My kingdom is not of this world' (John 18:36). Integralists, like socialists, are more ambitious."

Whether the figures Will singles out — Vance and Vermeule among them — respond publicly remains to be seen. Will's full column appears in The Washington Post. This report was originally published by Alternet.