Further to the debate on David Willetts' Oakeshott Lecture...
...the Willetts project is to offer a non-religious, though not anti-religious, account of civil society – what Mr Willetts also described as a "universal account of how we can sustain our institutions".
Personally, I don't think that as long as some people are religious and some are non-religious there can be a universal account of anything of any importance. Even within those two categories, different worldviews will lead people to different conclusions.
What we can hope for, however, is that enough people will be thinking along parallel lines for enough of the time to make for a reasonably coherent society. And therein lies the value of the Willetts project, a line of thought with the power to put secular liberalism on roughly the right track for at least part of the way.
But let's not forget what that track is parallel to.
