Roger Scruton on the "lifeblood" of a culture

Religion is the lifeblood of a culture. It provides the store of symbols, stories and doctrines that enable us to communicate about our destiny. It forms, through the sacred texts and liturgies, the constant point to which the poet and the critic can return — the language alike of ordinary believers and of the poets who must confront the ever-new conditions of life in the aftermath of knowledge, of life in a fallen world.

--- Roger Scruton, writing about T.S. Eliot, h/t Vox Nova