At the end of my time in Oxford, I was received into the church. A few years later I found a way to live out the best part of my conservative education and address the need for a deeper engagement between religious faith and contemporary culture. In 1989 I launched a quarterly journal of literature and the arts called Image , whose purpose is to feature original creative work that grapples with the Judeo-Christian tradition. There is some debate about just how deep the divisions of the culture wars go, but I think it's fair to say that, at the level of public discourse, we have witnessed a slide into increasingly shrill, utopian ideological rhetoric on both sides of the aisle. Politics may be a noble calling, but it is always in danger of becoming an end in itself.
Political struggles take place over issues that are defined by the underlying culture.
And culture, in turn, is nourished by art and religion. With all respect to my elders and betters, I think my generation, which grew up after the '60s, is less interested in manning the ideological battlements and more interested in cultivating the spiritual and imaginative sources of our common life. Catholics are playing a central role in a revival of art that grapples with faith. Think of writers like Oscar Hijuelos, Alice McDermott, Ron Hansen, Annie Dillard, Richard Rodriguez, David Plante, Tobias Wolff, Jon Hassler, and poets such as Dana Gioia, Paul Mariani, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, and the late Denise Levertov. I take it as a healthy sign that there is no school of Catholic writers, that the group I've just listed is marked by a tremendous diversity of styles and sensibilities.