[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

I don't think there is any other way to read Voegelin in this part of The New Science of Politics other than that he finds the superiority and success of the English and American constitutional orders to rest in the fact that they are still rooted in Christian culture and in Christian and representative institutions.

[cornelis]

It would seem though that one would have to understand certain aspects of the U.S. Constitution (and the ideas and spirit behind it)as resting on certain ontological presuppositions about reality. The "free exercise" of religion, for instance, seems to imply familiarity with and recognition of some sort of reality involved with spiritual expression and allegiances. It doesn't directly say that God exists or that there is a spiritual nature or even what that would mean, but we do know something about some of the beliefs of the signers of the Constitution. There is an ambiguity, but the presuppositions about the nature of reality are there. This is rather different from a totalitarian order, like the former U.S.S.R., which expressly denies the transcendent and the sacred. It seems to boild down to what we should make of the ambiguity and the prescribed procedural arrangements. Are they merely utilitarian and pragmatic or do they imply some deeper awareness of the nature of reality? This question seems one of the underlying pivots of disagreements between liberals and conservatives.

You summarize it well. And yet again, it is not so much ambiguity as freedom which defines the tension between being human in a real world.