It's time for a spiritual renaissance.

• Author: Kemp, Jack F.

ALEKSANDR Solzhenitzyn argues that, from time to time in history, we come across a "knot"--a moment when trends and issues are neatly tied together; an hour when alternatives are clear; that brief period before decisions harden into fate.

I believe America now faces a "knot" of its own. The fundamental choice comes disguised as a familiar political argument that is growing in intensity. There are those who say that conservatives must make a choice between a message of economic growth and one of cultural renewal. Take your side, we are told, and the fight can begin. Make your decision between economics and cultural values.

This choice is false; this conflict is destructive; and this decision, if forced on conservatives, would come at an unacceptable cost to their coalition. It is false in the realm of ideas because it ignores the full range of human needs, and costly in the realm of politics because it undermines the coalition of conscience that could transform the nation and renew its culture.

What is the relationship between free market economics and cultural values--between doing well and doing good? To some, capitalism and the prosperity it creates has held the promise of secular salvation, a utopia of affluence. To critics, it is seen as a Darwinian struggle where only the fittest survive.

Neither vision has matched reality. Democratic capitalism has not built a "New Jerusalem," nor has it returned us to the "law of the jungle." It promises, instead, liberation from abject poverty, freedom from political tyranny, and release of the individual conscience from oppression. No human system ever has kept its promises more faithfully. Democratic capitalism has been history's sharpest weapon against poverty, oppression, and tyranny.

Free markets have generated unequaled living standards for unrivaled numbers of men and women. As economist Joseph Schumpeter observed, "Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalists' achievement does not consist in providing silk stockings for queens, but in bringing them within reach of factory girls." Yet, capitalism's accomplishments run deeper. Its enduring appeal is not toasters, televisions, and transistors, but respect for individual innovation, creativity, and upward mobility.

Capitalism--unlike socialism--never has been a utopian vision. It never has promised to build the Kingdom of God on Earth. It has succeeded in allowing people to stand upright and dignified in the kingdoms of this world.

Yet, for all its successes, capitalism can not stand alone. It depends on a system of values and morality capitalism reinforces, but does not create, on moral and cultural habits that determine its appeal, power, and success. George Roche, president of Hillsdale College. explains that "There is a clear moral sense to economics involving sympathy and trust.... Markets reflect our spiritual values as well as our free economic choices." Consider the virtues of capitalism: the ethics of work, savings, and self-reliance; the integrity and honesty essential to contracts, trade, and money; a passion for excellence; and the impulse toward charity and philanthropy. All these things depend on values, not greed. A free market does not insist on perfect virtue, but it does depend on common morality.

In his book, The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Michael Novak writes: "The moral-cultural system is at once crucial to the health of democratic capitalism and easily overlooked. It is crucial because the primary form of capital is the human spirit. . . . It is too easily taken for granted because the habits of the heart are learned in childhood, supplying reasons that reason has forgotten.

Economics is more than a matter of interest rates and deficits. Morality is more than stained glass and hymns. Economic success is built on moral foundations. An economy reflects the moral image of its people. "It is impossible," wrote T.S. Eliot, "to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good." This simply is a restatement of the first conservative principle: The state of the human soul determines the shape of human society.

Every free society therefore faces an urgent question: How can it encourage the values of its people and still leave them free? The conservative message must be one of persuasion, not imposition.

A government conceived in liberty has none of the tools of tyranny. It can not enforce the savage "virtue" of the French Revolution or shape the socialist "new man." It depends, instead, on other institutions--structures between the individual and the state--that instill character, purpose, and virtue: churches and synagogues that raise a moral standard; parents who provide a moral and spiritual example to their children; and schools that teach not only the basics of math and history, but the basics of citizenship and character--lessons that come from an understanding of the Decalogue as well as the Declaration of Independence. British statesman Edmund Burke called them the "little platoons" that temper freedom with internal restraint. They enable people to achieve the ideal of the American founding: liberty constrained, not by law, but by...