Commentary Gets Religion

...That even 10 years ago a leading American intellectual journal would provide a forum for such sentiments was all but inconceivable...

...It also suggests that in the days to come the culture wars are likely to get hotter, not cooler, with the so-called Religious Right increasingly well-armed to engage in high-level combat...

...Yet while Glazer acknowledges that capitalism "is certainly better than its alternatives," he devotes the bulk of his essay to enumerating the deficiencies in American society that the market cannot remedy and may even aggravate...

...Even more pointedly, Scott McConnell, a columnist for the New York Post, observes that "the Republican resurgence fails to address key problems, and may well exacerbate them...

...For those interested in gaining an inkling of the terms of that debate, the November issue of Commentary is must reading...

...For those preoccupied with "cultural restoration," the conservative agenda as currently configured leaves much to be desired...

...That market economics will solve any remaining mysteries relating to the creation of wealth is assumed as a given...

...In that sense, Commentary's symposium provides a harbinger of what lies beyond conservatism's present-day intellectual horizon...

...What is the "good" toward which conservative efforts are directed...

...At the heart of culture is morality, and at the heart of morality is religion...

...Thus, according to William J. Bennett, "Cultural issues now have a central place in our national-political conversation...

...Yet despite some gratuitous boasting about the demise of socialism, few contributors are either cocky or self-congratulatory...

...So far, at least, the answer is almost nothing...

...For the impact of a genuine Great Awakening is unlikely to confine itself exclusively to the realm of culture...

...Rather, the overall tone of the symposium is one of weary resignation, the result perhaps of discovering that in a great struggle, even decisive victory is incomplete and gives birth to its own problems...

...Meanwhile, Tod Lind-berg yearns for "a religious reawakening that will sweep away the detritus of a failed and decadent culture...

...Once the dismantling of liberalism has been fully secured, however, it will become impossible to ignore them further...

...he asks...

...We now celebrate the victory of capitalism," writes Nathan Glazer...

...Barring a massive religious revival," says Dinesh D'Souza, "it is hard...

...Politics is, in largest part, a function of culture," he writes...

...A. J. Bacevich is executive director of the Foreign Policy Institute at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies...

...The return of God to politics will necessarily affect matters ranging from social justice to foreign policy, most likely in ways that few conservatives today can anticipate...

...According to Hilton Kramer, "a serious religious revival is under way in this country...

...McConnell complains that the new conservative majority "worries more about lower taxes and free-market principles than about social cohesion...

...This is a development of signal importance...

...An intimidating 72 responses were published...

...Lack of virtue is dimming our national prospect," laments Harvey C. Mansfield, voicing a sentiment echoed by several other contributors...

...While it would be misleading to suggest that the symposium represents a unified view, a careful reading reveals three overarching themes...

...it's just that they don't get to the heart of what ails the nation...

...Richard Brookhiser, a "religious revival . . . amounting to a Fourth Awakening...

...In short, religion permeates the Commentary symposium...

...According to Charles Murray, "In the society at large, something resembling the great religious awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries seems to be under way...

...For his part, Michael Novak predicts with evident relish that the coming "struggle to bring about the tens of millions of moral conversions that are going to be necessary if this country is to have a fourth Great Awakening" will "really sear our souls...

...to foresee America recovering its civic moorings...

...This perceived decline in values has already brought about a sharp reorientation in political subject matter...

...According to Robert Bork, "we are witnessing a religious revival, another awakening...

...We are undergoing what the Founding Fathers would recognize as a Great Awakening," declares Robert Bartley of the Wall Street Journal...

...To celebrate the magazine's 50th anniversary, Commentary's editors invited a select group of conservative intellectuals to take stock of "The National Prospect"-evaluating the present condition of America's basic institutions and venturing to assess the outlook for the nation's future...

...Thus, the next great debate in American politics will take place within the conservative camp...

...And a good thing, too...

...The first theme is an emerging redefinition of politics, with conservative attention reverting to concerns largely ignored since the 1960s: the politics of morality, values, and civic virtue...

...Eliot Cohen a "revival in religious awareness...

...Throughout the period in which they prepared their assault on liberalism, conservatives managed to ignore or gloss over those inconsistencies...

...Similarly, Midge Decter worries that "even a whole raft of conservative victories in the domestic cold war" will not save Americans from the "infectious nihilism" that she describes as "the single most serious threat that hangs over us...

...Yet the destination toward which it is hurtling is as yet largely undiscerned...

...The embrace of religion by conservative intellectuals shatters the image of American religiosity as the province of dim-witted rubes-an image relentlessly propagated by many in the mainstream media...

...The omnium-gatherum of values currently passing for "conservative" is laced with inconsistencies and contradictions-contradictions most evident to the observer perched on the seam where tradition meets modernity, or where culture collides with grand prescriptions for economic growth and the transforming potential of new technologies...

...That at the close of this flamboyantly secular century an influential segment of the American intelligentsia- arguably the most vigorous faction of the present-day intellectual elite-should welcome, indeed demand, the return of religion to the public square is nothing short of remarkable...

...Although by no means representative of rank-and-file conservative sentiment, the result provides a preview of ideas that in the months ahead will infiltrate into the political arena and, in popularized form, are likely to shape the next phase of the conservative agenda...

...Suzanne Garment sees evidence of "a type of religious revival...

...Thus, the third and, in many respects, dominant theme sounded by the symposium's contributors is the revitalization of religious belief in America...

...Various contributors suggest either that the times demand another Great Awakening, or that the nation is poised on the verge of such a mass religious revival, or that a Great Awakening is in fact already underway...

...Never," he writes, "have concrete actions-playing a leading role in local community institutions such as churches, synagogues, and school boards, setting an example in our homes of the principles we proclaim in public-been more important...

...Thus, when it comes to nurturing a commonweal of virtue, several contributors reflect an acute awareness that the triumph of the market is a mixed blessing...

...Arguing that "the essential problem is not pragmatic but moral" and that "we are living with a crisis of values that amounts in the end to a crisis of faith," Roger Kimball of the New Criterion also questions the relevance of conventional politics...

...What has the vaunted conservative resurgence done to address these problems...

...The historian Eugene Genovese makes the identical point: "Begin where you will-with the question of immigration, of the family, of the racial crisis, of law and order-you will end with the question of the religious roots of our national culture and political institutions...

...What ultimately is the new conservatism "about...

...Finally, it means that the precarious unity that the conservative movement has thus far preserved will be sorely tested...

...The outcome will determine whether conservatives will be able to match the negative achievement of undoing liberalism with the constructive one of articulating a compelling vision for the renewal of American society...

...The items comprising that agenda are not necessarily defective...

...Richard John Neuhaus, the editor of First Things, makes the case most explicitly...

...Striking a similar note, Richard Brookhiser of National Review argues that in pursuit of "cultural restoration," the conservative movement should "produce fewer policy wonks and pundits [and] more poets...

...Even an important military strategist like Eliot Cohen assigns particular priority to the revitalization of community life and mediating institutions...

...George Weigel, "the beginnings of another Great Awakening...

...He is not alone in that assessment...

...For contributors to Commentary's symposium, the remedy to this "crisis of values" is to be found in a new politics in which religion occupies center stage...