In his book Engaging God's World, Cornelius Plantinga discusses the cultural implications of the Dominion Mandate (Gen. 1:26-28).

God's good creation includes not only earth and its creatures, but also an array of cultural gifts, such as marriage, family, art, language, commerce, and (even in an ideal world) government. The fall into sin has corrupted these gifts but hasn't unlicensed them. The same goes for the cultural initiatives we discover in Genesis 4, that is, urban development, tent-making, musicianship, and metal-working. All of these unfold the built-in potential of God's creation. All reflect the ingenuity of God's human creatures--itself a superb example of likeness to God. After the building trades had been corrupted for millennia (having been used to build Babel and Babylon, for example) Jesus adopted one of them as his own [as a carpenter]. Cities themselves are God's idea. Good urban landscape management is a godly occupation. After centuries of urban crime and decay, the destination of redeemed people is not a return ticket to the garden of Eden, but entry into "the holy city, the new Jerusalem." Because "the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof," all the centuries of human obedience to the cultural mandate will have produced some treasure by the end--trash, too, but also treasure. If this is the "fullness" that belongs to God, then we may think of the holy city as the garden of Eden plus the fullness of the centuries.

To image God, then, human beings are charged not only with care for earth and animals ("subduing" what's already there) but also with developing certain cultural possibilities ("filling out" what is only potentially there). To unfold such possibilities--for example, to speak languages, build tools and dies, enter contracts, organize dance troupes--is to act in character for human beings designed by God. That is, to act in this way is to exhibit some of God's own creativity and dominion in a characteristically human way.

Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God's World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living

Roger Scruton on T. S. Eliot's "Little Gidding":

These lines take us back to the core belief of modern conservatism, which Burke expressed in the following terms: Society, he wrote, is indeed a contract; but not a contract among the living only; rather, it is a partnership between the living, the dead, and those yet to be born. And, he argued, only those who listen to the dead are fit custodians of future generations. Eliot’s complex theory of tradition gives sense and form to this idea. For he makes clear that the most important thing that future generations can inherit from us is our culture. Culture is the repository of an experience which is at once local and placeless, present and timeless, the experience of a community as sanctified by time. This we can pass on only if we too inherit it. Therefore, we must listen to the voices of the dead, and capture their meaning in those brief, elusive moments when “History is now and England.” In a religious community, such moments are a part of everyday life. For us, in the modern world, religion and culture are both to be gained through a work of sacrifice. But it is a sacrifice upon which everything depends. Hence, by an extraordinary route, the modernist poet becomes the traditionalist priest: and the stylistic achievement of the first is one with the spiritual achievement of the second.

"T. S. Eliot as Conservative Mentor"

Some highlights from Rod Dreher's "Manifesto" in Crunchy Cons:

• "Modern conservatism has become too focused on material conditions, and insufficiently concerned with the character of society. The point of life is not to become a more satisfied shopper."
  
• "The economy must be made to serve humanity's best interests, not the other way around."
  
• "Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government."
  
• "We believe that culture is more important than politics, and that neither America's wealth nor our liberties will long survive a culture that no longer lives by what Russell Kirk identified as 'the Permanent Things'--those eternal moral norms necessary to civilized life, and which are taught by all the world's great wisdom traditions."
  
• "A conservatism that does not recognize the need for restraint, for limits, and for humility is neither helpful to individuals and society nor, ultimately, conservative. This is particularly true with respect to the natural world."
  
• "A good rule of thumb: Small and Local and Old and Particular are to be preferred over Big and Global and New and Abstract."
  
• "Appreciation of aesthetic quality--that is, beauty--is not a luxury, but key to the good life."
  
• "The cacophony of contemporary popular culture makes it hard to discern the call of truth and wisdom. There is no area in which practicing asceticism is more important."
  
• "Politics and economics will not save us. If we are to be saved at all, it will be through living faithfully by the Permanent Things, preserving these ancient truths in the choices we make in everyday life. In this sense, to conserve is to create anew."