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Ross Douthat Biography

Ross Gregory Douthat (/ˈdaʊθæt/; born November 28, 1979) is an American author, blogger and New York Times columnist.

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You start reading C. S. Lewis, then you’re reading G. K. Chesterton, then you’re a Catholic.

Catholic, Chesterton, Lewis, Reading, Start

During a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly burst out: “Your eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” The cardinal, the anecdote goes, responded ruefully: “Your majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you. ”

Argument, Aware, Cardinal, Catholic, Church, Years

I do think that evangelicals in general need to think seriously about how you pass on your faith across generations and over the long haul.

Across, Evangelicals, Long, Needs, Seriously, Thinking

It's not always clear where a healthy patriotism shades into a dangerous nationalism.

Dangerous, Healthy, Nationalism, Patriotism, Shade

Institutional Christianity has had clear secular benefits to American life for hundreds of years. It's played both a prophetic role in terms of generating moral critiques of American excesses, and so on, and also a communal role, in terms of building community as the country moved westward to the role my own Catholic Church played in assimilating generations of immigrants.

Benefits, Community, Country, Life, Secular, Years

Every Christian in every time and place is going to be tempted by certain forms of heresy. I'm sure I'm tempted by my own.

Certain, Christian, Form, Forms, Heresy

Many things about American life, that even secular people consider good, have flowed from the presence of a robust, resilient institutional Christianity.

American, Christianity, Flowed, People, Resilient, Robust

I think that secular liberals need to recognize that they are still, often, hanging their worldview on what are metaphysical ideas.

Ideas, Liberals, Needs, Recognize, Thinking

It's clearly the case that there's not some moment in American history when every evangelical is holding hands with every Catholic who is holding hands with every mainline Methodist, or what have you. Obviously, American Christianity was deeply divided in all kinds of ways at mid-century too. But there was a kind of convergence going on. Even though Reinhold Niebuhr, the great mainline Protestant theologian, didn't think highly of Billy Graham, he and Graham still, clearly, had more in common, both theologically and in their attitudes toward religion in public life.

Attitude, Hands, Religion, Theologically, Thinking, Ways

In many ways, American evangelicalism is somewhat stronger today than it was in, say 1955 - certainly more mainstream and influential in the culture as a whole. But, the increased strength of evangelicalism hasn't increased fast enough to compensate for the total collapse of mainline Protestantism and the pretty steady weakening of my own Roman Catholic Church.

Catholic, Church, Evangelicalism, Strength, Stronger

Just as the superstar pastor model can have its problems once the superstar pastor gets old or has a scandal or something, the house church model. . . there's a reason that the house churches of the New Testament era grew up into a more institutional faith down the road.

Church, Era, Grew, House, Institutional, Scandal

America's problem isn't too much religion or too little of it. It's bad religion: the slow-motion collapse of traditional Christianity and the rise of a variety of destructive pseudo-Christianities in its place.

America, Destructive, Littles, Place, Problem, Too Much

The idea of a post-religious society is a fantasy, ultimately. Human beings are, by nature, religious in various ways.

Beings, Fantasy, Ideas, Religious, Way, Ways

Even secular people can't really escape from the need to rest their ideas on some belief, some sort of commitment that is not scientific commitment.

Commitment, Ideas, People, Secular, Sort

In the end, you do need institutions to transmit the faith for the long haul. That's why I make the case that, in certain ways, American Protestants could stand to recover the denominationalism that they've left behind over the last 50 years. They are real values in having a confessional tradition that can sustain your faith over the long term.

Case, Long, Real, Transmit, Years

The decline of institutional Christianity over the last 40 or 50 years has empowered a side of American religion that has always been there. The sort of do-it-yourself, "create your own Jesus" kind of faith. But, the forms that faith takes do have a real reason they are so appealing.

American, Empowered, Institutional, Jesus, Real, Years

I think it is fair, in a way, to describe certain forms of Marxism, for instance, as the secular equivalent of a religion. But, I think the same is true, to a certain extent, of secular liberalism as well.

Describe, Extent, Form, Secular, Thinking, Way

I think it is very clear that, though great difference remained, evangelicals moved closer to Catholics, mainline Protestants and evangelical Protestants moved closer together, and this convergence coincided with greater institutional strength for all the Christian churches than, for the most part, you see today.

Christian, Coincided, Differences, Protestants, Thinking, Though

Americans are an "almost chosen people," which is meant to suggest that there are clear parallels, literal, theological and everything else, between the American story and the Old Testament story of Israel and then the broader story of the Christian church. It's OK to recognize the parallels. It's OK to invoke them. But, you have to keep that "almost" in front of the "chosen. " You can't go all the way and say, "America is Israel, America is the Church. " That's where I think patriotism shades into, what I call, the heresy of nationalism.

America, Chosen, Christian, Old, Testament, Thinking

Independent of the critique I'm making, I'm just trying to paint a more comprehensive portrait of American religion than you get from a right versus left, religious conservatives versus secular liberal, believer versus atheist, binary. Too often, we just look at religion in America through that kind of either
or lens. I think it's much more complicated than that.

Atheist, Independent, Look, Religious, Versus

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