Quotes by Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat

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

Littles

Too Much

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.

Christian

Israel

Thinking

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

Every young writer, I imagine, has their first intellectual magazine, whose essays and articles are devoured all the more greedily for being slightly over one’s head. Mine was First Things.

Firsts

Intellectual

Magazines

I read a lot of G.K. Chesterton. It was a fairly conventional intellectual path to the Catholic church, I would say.

Catholic

Church

Intellectual

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

Differences

Thinking

If you’re willing to recognize the religious element in one secular ideology, you need to be able to recognize it in your own.

Able

Needs

Religious

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

Stronger

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

Thinking

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

Dangerous

Healthy

Shade

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Able

America

Attitude

Catholic

Certain

Choices

Christian

Christianity

Church

Dangerous

Differences

Difficult Questions

Doubt

Firsts

Form

Hands

Healthy

Historical

Ideas

Intellectual

Islam

Israel

Jesus

Littles

Magazines

Mother

Needs

Party

People

Political

Reading

Real

Religious

Resilient

Rights

Self

Shade

Simple

Stronger

Thinking

Too Much

Unyielding

Way

Years

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Quotes by Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat

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.

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.

Every young writer, I imagine, has their first intellectual magazine, whose essays and articles are devoured all the more greedily for being slightly over one’s head. Mine was First Things.

I read a lot of G.K. Chesterton. It was a fairly conventional intellectual path to the Catholic church, I would say.

If you’re willing to recognize the religious element in one secular ideology, you need to be able to recognize it in your own.

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

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Topics by Ross Douthat

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

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