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.
Ross DouthatI 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.
Ross DouthatYou start reading C.S. Lewis, then youโre reading G.K. Chesterton, then youโre a Catholic.
Ross DouthatEven 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.
Ross DouthatDuring a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly burst out: โYour eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?โ The cardinal, the anecdote goes, responded ruefully: โYour 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.โ
Ross DouthatWhat replaces Christianity isn't going to be Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and so on. It's going to be something else and something secular people may not like very much.
Ross DouthatMy mother converted when I was 16. She was the driving force behind religion in our family. So, I'm sure I was heavily influenced by that. But, I also was, and still am, convinced by the Catholic churches historical claims to represent the continuity with the early Church that other forms of Western Christianity lack.
Ross Douthat