"The strangely conservative French"

"the French have never gotten over killing God during the Enlightenment, and cope with it in one of two ways:  by ritually reenacting the murder through radical atheism, or by searching for something to fill the now empty tabernacle."

     Mark Lilla, "The strangely conservative  French," The New York review of books 62, no. 16 (October 22, 2015):  51 (50-52).