Culture March 2, 2010

There are two species of religious sentiment, David Hume declared in 1741, writing in bleak Enlightenment Scotland as the American colonies endured the brushfire of a first great religious revival: the superstitious and the enthusiastic. It can be tempting today to see the secular liberalism of contemporary Europe—a creed besieged by enthusiasts Islamic fundamentalist, American interventionist, and homegrown Christian nationalist—as a variety of gloomy superstition. As Ian Buruma chronicles in his slight Taming the Gods, many of the most vocal defenders of that agnostic, ameliorative tradition make their case with the docent-like outlook of guardians of an heirloom culture facing