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I don't think theological liberalisation or even a loss of faith among Protestants necessarily entails a decay into centralised power. In fact, if anything, I'd say libertarianism is the more fundamental ideology that was hallucinated into existence as a way of dealing with religious fracture. I wouldn't say things like homesteading, having solar panels, raising cattle, hosting your own git server, self-custody of your Bitcoin, etc., have any particular rooting in Protestant theology itself (although I won't pretend some Protestants don't try to contend so; but I think this is them failing to recognise their own reflection in the Rorschach dots, rather than remotely serious exegesis of what's actually being said in the text).
As for whether theological liberalism resulted in a loss of power, I mean, kind of? But the Jews who are actually in power are not the sort who take the Torah particularly seriously. I mean, they do in a sort of "It's tradition, and it's our tradition" sense. It's clear Scott in Unsong has great affection for Jewish tradition. But it's also definitely not the same sort of respect as religious fundamentalists have.
And the Catholics in power today... well, as has been questioned on this very forum: "Is the pope Catholic?"
No, you're mistaking me: I am saying Mainline Protestants had a lot of power in America for a long time, but theological liberalization split them and the (conservative) splitters by default didn't have institutional control. Here, this comment explains more of what I am getting at.
Libertarianism is famously hard to define but the traits that are shared by libertarian-leaning Americans predate the fundamentalist-mainline split.
WELL THIS IS AN INTERESTING QUESTION and what I would say is that the theology and culture are all caught up together. To grossly simplify things, there's a good argument to be had that the libertarian tendency in the United States is in no small part downstream of the British Isles and specifically the borderers. Now, Christianity in the Isles were always distinct from the mainland. Check in on the Scottish clergy and you'll find them doing things like "illegally seating an excommunicated guy as king." It's not particularly surprising that if you check in on them a bit later you find that their theology is, if not "libertarian," skeptical of tyranny and ("papish") centralized authority. I think the culture and theology accelerated each other; necessity is the mother of invention and all that.
Power is downstream of institution-building. I have had an unusually high amount of exposure to institutions of both Protestant and Catholic origin and I have every respect for Catholic institution building. They are very smart, very serious, and their approach to the world helps them avoid some pitfalls that Protestants often fall into, in my opinion. Protestants are extremely likely to want their organizations to be a fully confessional community, which has serious advantages but cuts Protestant entities off from the talent of other faith groups. This is easiest to see in their universities: Catholic institutions are typically quite happy to hire talented professors and staff of all or no faith, while conservative Protestant schools often restrict staff to those who share their faith. This has real benefits but narrows their talent pool, sometimes fairly dramatically.
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