A rebirth of virtue: religion and liberal renewal.

• Author: Townsend, Kathleen Kennedy
• Position: Special Anniversary Section: Who We Are, What We Believe; Why We Believe It

This piece apeared in 1982.

"The hogs were really feeding. The greed level, the level of opportunism just got out of control." The speaker is the director of the Office of Management and Budget, describing the final negotiations among the leaders of our nation, liberals and conservatives alike, that led to the 1981 tax bill.

"I hate to say this, but I don't like to work with poor people. They are the kind of people who don't interest me. I can't help it; I'm not a nice guy; I don't like poor people." The speaker, more candid than most but not unrepresentative of his colleagues, is a leading Washington psychiatrist.

I don't know about you, but to me these examples suggest that this country is in serious trouble, and that the crisis, at bottom, is a moral one. We've lost something at the core of our national character that once acted to shape our behavior. We've lost our sense of virtue.

Maybe the Moral Majority is on to something. It's on to it too narrowly. It has applied its definition of virtue specifically to particular political positions that are insensitive to the discriminations suffered by blacks and that are militaristic and antifemale. This has given the idea of moral virtue a bad name. But the basic feeling that a spiritual renewal and a repairing of American moral fabric have something to do with each other is not far off the mark. Most liberal Democrats nowadays do not appreciate its importance. Discussion of moral values makes them uneasy.

Religious conviction-in all faiths-gives us the ability to reject the easy and safe career, or at least to risk that career if it conflicts with our ability to speak truthfully and act responsibly. It teaches us-rightly, I think-that happiness is hollow and ephemeral compared to the satisfactions of a life of service. It can inspire us to bear public denunciation and ridicule if we know that "the cause endures and the hopes still lives." And it can allow us to forgive and to love those who criticize us.

Instead of that model of modern thinking, the Washington psychiatrist, religion gives us the model of Saint Francis of Assisi, with his indifference to material things and his passionate concern for the poor. By cutting itself off from religion, the left has failed, as Harvey Cox, a professor of religion at Harvard, puts it, "to understand the power and significance of myth and ritual and symbol in the...