Jews were not alone in falling prey to the fatal illusion of utopianism. In a dozen articles in a variety of journals, Kristol criticised the vain attempts of American and European diplomats to solve the problems of the Middle East. In the last of these articles, in the Wall Street Journal in 1997, he gave an academic gloss to the Middle East "peace process," relating it to the theory known to social scientists as "conflict resolution." That therapeutic approach to human affairs, Kristol observed, based on the assumption that trust and understanding could resolve all conflicts, was sometimes appropriate to domestic disputes but hardly to the intractable realities confronting Israel and Arabs. In practice, the so-called peace process had turned out to be a polite name for an "appeasement process," with Israel making concessions and Arabs consistently responding by demanding more.

Religion played a smaller part in Kristol's writings in these later years, but a no less provocative one. Commenting, one Christmas Eve, on the familiar objections by some American Jews to the crèches in the public square and Christmas carols in public schools, Kristol observed that America, while not a Christian nation, was after all a Christian society. The "wall" separating church and state was not, as some Jews thought, a wall separating religion and society. To try to secularise society by eliminating all traces of religion from American public life was contra naturam, defying the lessons of history, sociology, and psychology. On another occasion, responding to Jewish fears of evangelicals and the Christian Right, Kristol warned that the real danger came not from Christianity but from a renascent paganism hostile to all biblical religion. Well before the rise of Islamist extremism and terrorism, he predicted "an upsurge of anti-biblical barbarism that will challenge Christianity, Judaism, and Western civilization altogether."

To live amicably in a Christian society did not mean, for Kristol, the diminution of Judaism itself. As he had criticised Milton Steinberg's "basic Judaism" for denying Judaism's essential and unique character, so he now criticised the brand of "tolerance" promoted in Christian-Jewish "dialogue" — an interfaith exercise that had the effect of secularising and liberalising both religions. In a Christian and tolerant society like America, he reasoned, it was all the more incumbent on Jews to cultivate "an authentically religious kind of tolerance — that is to say, a tolerance that has religious roots as against secular roots."

"Religious roots": this recalls the "neo gene" that in his 1995 memoir Kristol identified as "at the root of all the others." His long and productive career, devoted in large part to the secular subjects of politics and economics, foreign affairs and culture — the preoccupations that warranted his title as neoconservatism's godfather — also produced a considerable number of penetrating and challenging essays on Jews and Judaism. Notable in themselves, these essays also correct a common misconception of the nature of Kristol's "basic predisposition" to religion — that it was merely utilitarian, valuable primarily, if not entirely, as a moral and stabilising force in society.

For Kristol, religion is that as well — but as a by-product of what is essential about it, its metaphysical and spiritual character. Religion, he held, is not just for the good of society; it is good for the individual, and not just for the sake of leading an ethical life but for the sake of a meaningful and soulful life. Nor should Kristol's neo-orthodoxy be mistaken for New Age religiosity, which is personal, eclectic, ephemeral. His neo-orthodoxy is firmly Jewish, rooted in history and community, in an ancient faith and an enduring people.