Great article, thanks.

The lesson is clear: don't base you life on existence - or mess up with existence at your own peril.

The non-existence of God should not be used as an excuse - and excuse is all it is, to stop loving and worshipping Him, or to lead a wanton life instead. Man knows inherently to distinguish between good and evil and the idea of existence, whose root is temptation, does not come into it.

“the key role of the Church of mediating reality”

More a role ‘assumed’ by the church through history, too often used to manipulate, exploit and tyrannise.

“There has never been a time in which faith has not been fragile and rare.”

‘fragile and rare’ makes faith sound ‘precious’ as well as difficult to maintain. Faith is more commonly a conservative custom, abject poverty of mind, or obstinacy of intellect.
Faith in anything is a dangerous disposition, robbing the individual and society of their wonted agility in a dangerous world.
I do think we need ideas to believe in, but these have to evolve and address the changing human condition. The church is merely a relic.
The Enlightenment on the other hand, wound up like clockwork and set running by the philosophes to follow a random, market-based trajectory of human ‘progress,’ has to be idealistically reconceived and ‘plotted’ to follow not a ‘Messianic’ path, but a prudent and human ‘pre-destiny’—a true Enlightenment.
The second half of the article is simplistic, comparing Updike’s credulously-flawed characters and “lost souls” with the worthies he knows and promotes:
“Most people I know, churched or not, are decent and reliable and honest. Those who proclaim atheism are perhaps even better than most because they have actually thought about the question of god.”
You forget Peter that Updike looks beneath the ‘appearances’ churches (including the scientific church) are so keen to maintain; ‘decency’, ‘reliability’ and ‘honesty’ are performative at best, but more often modes of forbearance—or complacency!
“So how do we assess our culture compared to the past and as associated with the decline of the influence of the Church?”
The Church's past is barbarism. Scientific culture has great potential but must take the helm, guided by new values which dictate ‘over’ the market place.
Unless the Church can contribute to the design of a new ethics—more importantly, convert its squawking flock to it—it’s part of the problem rather than solution.

The “supreme task of raising the next generation” does not belong to mothers—conservative creatures (by nature) reliant on stability—but polity!

Yes and hear hear.
Rhrosty.

A lovely piece, thank you.

Beauty is, of course, 'in the eye of the beholder'. It is a deeply individual creation of our perception interacting with our cognition, experiences and limbic system to produce a powerful response, sometimes so powerful that it changes lives. It is a private act of experiencing that cannot be taken from us and if we practise, we can find it ever more easily and experience it more completely.

While it has been at the heart of the great religions, inspired art and driven philosophies, its power is genuinely transcendent and it sits comfortably at the lab bench or the boardroom table. Richard Feynman, a colossus of that hardest of sciences, particle physics, on beauty:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbFM3rn4ldo

Steve Jobs put his personal quest for beauty at Apple's core (evem puns can be beautiful) and when Brin and Page started Google they set a beautiful idea - "Do No Evil" - as the minimum standard to be aspired to.

What we find beautiful and where we find it tells us a little about ourselves if we choose to listen. When we share our experience of beauty with others we are telling them something about ourselves that may be hard to express any other way.

Their response may tell us more about them that they realise.

Yes, an unusually good essay, but as usual flawed in its understanding of the human situation in the mid to late 20th century, and of course now in the 21st.
The various essays available on this site address the relationship between science (and scientism), popular self-serving religiosity, and culture altogether. The subtitle of the featured book is:
Prophetic Wisdom about the Myths and Idols of mass culture and popular religious cultism, the new priesthood of scientific and political materialism, and the secrets of Enlightenment hidden in the body of Man.

http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/ScientificProof/tableofcontents.html

Squeers.
There you go again: "Faith is more commonly a conservative custom, abject poverty of mind, or obstinacy of intellect." This may be true of millions of believers but surely it cannot be true of, for example Rowan Williams, ex Archbishop of Canterbury, one the the great minds of our time or any number of well educated and deeply considered believers. The anglican congregations that I have been associated with are full of professionals of all sorts as are all sorts of congregations. Your opinion is pure prejudice and cant. You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. When was the last time you talked with someone educated in theology or visited a congregation anywhere.

Please, if you want to contribute to the conversation do some research into the facts before you blow your mouth off.