WETZSTEIN: Faith, family work together

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By Cheryl Wetzstein

Earlier this year, American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray wrote a warning about American elites pushing America to become like Europe.

European social policies "drain too much of the life from life," Mr. Murray wrote in a March article in The Washington Post called, "Thank God America Isn't Like Europe."

A "spreading European mentality ... goes something like this," he wrote. "Human beings are a collection of chemicals that activate and, after a period of time, deactivate. The purpose of life is to while away the intervening time as pleasantly as possible."

The truth, he explained, is that the most momentous events of life occur "within just four institutions: family, community, vocation and faith."

The European model "enfeebles" these four institutions, so the Democratic Party is foolish to steer this nation in that direction.

Instead, Mr. Murray wrote, if America is to remain an "exceptional" nation, its elites "of all political stripes" should do more to preserve and strengthen these four institutions.

I am inspired to bring up Mr. Murray's observation after attending a conference about religious practice and the family, sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, Child Trends and the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion. The tiny slices of research presented at the Heritage conference showed that faith and family are intertwined.

Faith and family work together to "socialize children," and orient a nation's people to "moral, social and spiritual goods," as University of Virginia sociology professor W. Bradford Wilcox said.

On the downside, he added, because faith and family are synergistic, the erosion of one pulls down the other.

This begs the question: Should Americans be overly concerned about the strength of their religious and family culture? Aren't secular things -- education, technology, democracy, media and agnostic tolerance -- enough to keep America flourishing?