A lost virtue

Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue. Paul Woodruff. Oxford University Press, 248 pp., $19.95.

In some parts of the country, the Ten Commandments make front-page news. Where they are already posted in schools and courtrooms, local authorities refuse to take them down. Where they have not yet been posted, those same authorities vote unanimously to display them, publicly defying the American Civil Liberties Union to do anything about it. One north Georgia county recently announced that three new plaques would be installed in the courthouse: one engraved with the Ten Commandments, one with the Lord's Prayer, and one blank plaque "to stand for all of the other religions."

The general idea seems to be that the removal of religion from public life has resulted in the moral breakdown of society, and that the best medicine for broken families, communities, schools and governments is a strong dose of religious belief. Which religious belief? As the unengraved plaque so poignantly attests, there is only one real candidate. Those who do not stand in the Judeo-Christian tradition are blank slates, along with their beliefs.