My suspicion is that they had to find some ideological justification for writing about this cool project in a conservative magazine, so they probably just shoehorned those lines in there.

I don't think this is a bad thing. The more conservatives are exposed to ideas and cultures that are radically at odds with contemporary conservative mores, the more likely these conservatives are to open their minds.

And make no mistake, ancient Rome as a pagan civilization is absolutely at odds with contemporary American conservatism. They can twist and shoehorn in their preferred takes as much as they'd like, but once the seed is planted the smarter conservatives start looking beyond the provincial ideas they're inclined to inherit from their immediate cultural background.