Rendering fields with node display settings I would like to take advantage of the settings I can set under admin/structure/types/manage/node_type/display when i render my custom fields in node--node_type.tpl.php but using the following code I just get some sort of default display setting:

&lt;?php 
  print render( field_view_field('node', $node, 'field_date', array('label' =&gt; 'hidden')) ); 
?&gt;


This prints my date in the long format, but under /display I already set it to medium. 
Also I have already set the label as hidden under the display settings.

How can I use those settings and only override them if I want to? Or is field_view_field() not the right function?
The content array should already contain an element for each field with the display settings applied. You can just print that directly:

&lt;?php print render($content['field_date']); ?&gt;