St. Maximos' Hut

I haven't been online a great deal lately - Christmas holidays away, grading exams, and so on. So I missed the discussion on TKS and The Corner about a Jeffrey Hart essay on conservatism. TKS (formerly "The Kerry Spot" and now relocated to Turkey) had a thoughtful reflection on the religion portion. TKS begins by quoting the Hart essay:

Religion is an integral part of the distinctive identity of Western civilization. But this recognition is only manifest in traditional forms of religion — repeat, traditional, or intellectually and institutionally developed, not dependent upon spasms of emotion. This meant religion in its magisterial forms.
What the time calls for is a recovery of the great structure of metaphysics, with the Resurrection as its fulcrum, established as history, and interpreted through Greek philosophy. The representation of this metaphysics through language and ritual took 10 centuries to perfect. The dome of the sacred, however, has been shattered. The act of reconstruction will require a large effort of intellect, which is never populist and certainly not grounded on emotion, an unreliable guide. Religion not based on a structure of thought always exhibits wild inspired swings and fades in a generation or two.

Then TKS comments:

I wonder how many people I speak for when I say, “huh?”

Am I becoming one of those feared anti-intellectual types when I try to boil this down? Religion gives you hope, something to fear beyond getting caught, teaches right from wrong, binds you to your neighbors and your community, offers a ritual that ties you to your ancestors going back plenty of generations and begins to answer those questions that enter your mind late at night when you can’t get to sleep. As long as it doesn’t become a part of the government and exercising coercion of those of other faiths, it’s generally a good, healthy part of American public life. (For the past few generations, the scarlet ‘A’ on clothing has meant the wearer is an Anaheim Angels fan.) There are a bunch of weenies who are terrified of it and/or unfairly demonize religion, and want it driven from the public square. Conservatives oppose ‘em, and that's the way it ought to be.

This is pretty good, although I am not so sure about the "as long as it doesn't become a part of the government" bit. What exactly does that mean? Presidents Bush and Carter were particularly open about their beliefs, with rather different consequences for policy. I don't think we can say that either shouldn't have allowed his religious beliefs to affect his policies - the whole point of having beliefs is to have them affect your behavior. If all TKS means is that we don't want a state endorsed religion, then I think he's right because state endorsement seems to have very bad consequences for religion (and doesn't necessarily have good consequences for the state either). But one of John Kerry's worst moments (which is saying something) during the 2004 campaign was his attemtps to reach out to Christian (and esp. Catholic) voters while not allowing his religious beliefs to have an impact on his policies in the area of abortion. Catholicism seems just as good or better as a basis for determining when life begins as biology and I'd prefer someone as a president, neighbor, friend, etc. who was at least internally consistent about the subject to someone who was willing to compromise what ought to be deeply held religious convictions for political expediency.

Given the way the "religion in the public square" debate has gone recently, I think I'd lean toward a little too much rather than too little.