Levin and Douthat on Religious Institutional Decline

The proximate purpose is a review of Charles Murray's new book Coming Apart, but my friend and former colleague Yuval Levin and Ross Douthat offer perceptive comments about the role of religious institutions and the problem of their decline in American life here and here. From Yuval:

[T]he cultural disaster Murray describes seems to be a failing of America’s moral (and therefore largely its religious) institutions. And although he does not put it this way, Coming Apart is a scathing indictment of American social conservatism.

Social conservatism serves two kinds of purposes in a liberal society: We might call them justice and order. In the cause of justice, it speaks up for the weak and the oppressed, defending them from abuse by the powerful, and vindicating basic human dignity. In the cause of order, it helps us combat our human failings and vices, and argues for self-discipline and responsibility. Think of abolition on the one hand and temperance on the other.

In our time, American social conservatism has much to be proud of as a movement for justice: Social conservatives devote themselves to the pro-life cause, to human rights, and to the plight of the poor abroad. But American social conservatism has almost entirely lost interest in the cause of order—in standing up for clean living, for self-discipline and restraint, for resisting temptation and meeting basic responsibilities. The institutions of American Christianity—some of which would actually stand a chance of being taken seriously by the emerging lower class—are falling down on the job, as their attention is directed to more exciting causes, in no small part because the welfare state has overtaken some of their key social functions.

The cultural revival essential to addressing the crisis Murray describes is barely imaginable as long as this remains the case. Indeed, whether such a revival is imaginable under any circumstances is by no means clear in Murray’s telling. Surely an all-out return to the condition from which he says we have fallen seems far out of reach. But this may have as much to do with the particular cultural high-point against which Murray has chosen to measure our current state as with the potential for a moral revival in American life.

And then from Douthat, with a particular lesson for Catholic colleges and universities:

[R]eligious belief offers one of the most few motivators that might be potent enough to persuade a high-achiever to choose a life outside the SuperZips. (Just ask Ignatius of Loyola, or Francis of Assisi, or …) And even in their weakened state, our religious institutions — with their flar-flung networks of parishes and ministries and schools in need of leadership — offer a more plausible mechanism than most other professions for seeding middle America with the talented and energetic. What’s more, faith itself can have a leveling effect in a stratified society, and supply a common ground for people from very different walks of life: Under some circumstances, at least, a young Princeton-educated pastor might be better equipped to minister to a blue-collar community than a Princeton-educated social worker or Teach For America participant. To the extent that the kind of upper class civic reawakening that Murray calls for is even a remotely plausible answer to the current social crisis, then, it would probably have to be a religious awakening as well.