Faith, hope, and welfare.

• Author: Wooster, Martin Morse

The debate over American politics in the 1990s is becoming increasingly spiritual. The left discusses the "politics of meaning"; the right quarrels over "family values." The reasons for this debate are grounded in the nature and limits of government.

The problems of the welfare state are primarily moral and cultural. Put the 50 best poverty fighters in America in a room and ask for a consensus, and they will likely tell you that someone who graduates from high school, gets a job (any job), and marries will not be poor.

But government has a very hard time dealing with moral issues. Government is all stick and no carrot; it is very good at beating the public with regulations, taxes, quotas, fines, and legalisms, but very bad at inspiring people to lead a just and decent life.

In welfare, for example, the state can generate volumes of regulations mandating workfare programs. It can create welfare offices that are hellish. But it cannot persuade troubled urban youth to postpone childbearing, or teach the underclass about the merits (and means) of joining the work force. In educational matters, the U.S. Department of Education can generate thousands of pages of national goals and regulations, but there is no evidence that any federal report ever inspired a child to study hard or to love learning.

So thoughtful Americans on the left and right have begun to wonder if the only tool government can use is a bludgeon. Can't the state persuade people to lead good lives? Is politics something better than an endless power struggle between special interests?

These questions are at the core of the debate over religion and politics. The left and the right choose to answer them in different ways.

The liberal debate over religion has been quietly going on for years, with the rise of the communitarians and with the endless editorials in Tikkun advocating therapeutic government. But the liberal debate was energized by Hillary Clinton's endorsement of the "politics of meaning."

We knew during the campaign that Hillary Clinton was a Methodist, but while there was extensive coverage of Bill Clinton's religion, no one thought that Hillary's churchgoing was very interesting. The story the press told us was that the Clintons were a modern couple--they went on separate vacations and went to separate churches.

But the First Lady had read Tillich and Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer, and spent a good deal of time talking to theologians about the meaning of life. And as Michael...