That's why, for Christians, human life has the basic form of a moral adventure. This is reflected in the epic, narrative structure of the Bible: starting with the creation of humankind, followed by our fall from grace, and then the long road back with Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, with Moses out of Egypt, with Jesus to Golgotha and Emmaus, and then on to the New Jerusalem.

For Christians life is basically a moral adventure, where much can be lost, because there's so much to be gained. Life is a serious business, but only because it is heavy with moral significance. In a community formed by Christianity talking about what's valuable, and about the rights and wrongs of investing in it, is the natural thing to do. So one important service that Christian tradition can perform for the institutions of a liberal society is to help give them the confidence to set their moral tongue free. 

A Christian heritage and background ambiance, however, are not enough. Sometimes the corpse of a Christian institution is animated by a laissez-faire liberal heart. Thirty years ago, I'm told, Peterhouse had a strong Anglo-Catholic ethos. Perhaps that lingered in the air long enough for Damian McBride to inhale it in the 1990s. If so, it seems to have had no effect — as least, not immediately. So what went wrong? Well, maybe McBride was One That Got Away. Maybe his mentors sought to persuade him to value and virtue, and he simply turned away. Maybe. I think it far more likely, however, that they never raised the topics or used the words. In the 25 years I have worked in British and Irish universities, never once has the moral formation of students been a topic of conversation with colleagues, and on the only occasion when I proposed to use the word "virtue" in a statement of educational purpose, it was rejected as too "spiritual". 

I don't doubt that university teachers sometimes do form their students in virtue. A good teacher will exemplify and encourage a student to be honest in reporting evidence, careful in drawing inferences from it, patient in coaxing good sense from difficult texts, fair and charitable in treating uncongenial viewpoints, courageous in facing threatening ideas, humble in admitting the limits of knowledge, resilient in pursuit of elusive truths. Honesty, carefulness, patience, fairness, charity, courage, humility, and resilience — all of these are intellectual virtues, but they are also broader, social ones that have important application in the home, in the workplace and in the public forum. Teachers sometimes do foster them, but in my experience they're highly unlikely to admit it. And when moral silence prevails in institutions — notwithstanding Christian heritage, Latin graces and chapel services — not only can amoral teaching flourish, but adolescent students receive the general impression that proper adults don't care about values and virtues, and they resolve to grow up accordingly. So when they leave the womb of their alma mater for the big wide world, they embark, not on a moral adventure, but on a power trip.