Ross Douthat

Liberalism has never done as well as it thinks at resolving its own crises.

— Ross Douthat

Human beings seek community, and permanent openness is hard to sustain.

— Ross Douthat

We've always been a nation of heretics.

— Ross Douthat

I identify, I guess, as a conservative Catholic.

— Ross Douthat

It's always good to have fears for your eternal soul.

— Ross Douthat

Even Warren Buffet is allowed to have an awful year from time to time.

— Ross Douthat

Our crisis of the house divided was a Christian civil war.

— Ross Douthat

Even conservative columnists tend to prefer humor that isn't fit to print.

— Ross Douthat

The thinking person's case for Romney, murmured by many of his backers, amounts to this: Vote for Mitt, you know he doesn't…

— Ross Douthat

It's an oversimplication to say that more monks and nuns are the answer to the Joel Osteen-ification of Christianity... but it wouldn't…

— Ross Douthat

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

— Ross Douthat

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

— Ross Douthat

I think it's totally possible and plausible that racial balkanization is a recurring aspect of the nature of human politics.

— Ross Douthat

If you're too confident in assuming that America's and God's purposes are one, you tiptoe toward idolatry.

— Ross Douthat

Awards shows are being pushed to shed their genteel limousine liberalism and embrace the race-gender-sexual identity agenda in full.

— Ross Douthat

Most people want the convenience of the Internet far more than they want the private spaces that older forms of communication protected.

— Ross Douthat

Great preschools are no easier to build than great high schools, and if you think your kids might be better off in…

— Ross Douthat

No one doubts that pure libertarianism is simple, but that's just why it remains on the ideological fringe - because it boils…

— Ross Douthat

I think generally, Pope Benedict did a good job cleaning up the way the church handled abusive priests but didn't go far…

— Ross Douthat

That the actual practice of meritocracy mostly involves a strenuous quest to avoid any kind of downward mobility, for oneself or for…

— Ross Douthat

There were times at Harvard when I actually longed to hang out with a few more Trotskyists, rather than yet another set…

— Ross Douthat

Just as the superstar pastor model can have its problems once the superstar pastor gets old or has a scandal or something,…

— Ross Douthat

“There are seven deadly sins, not just one, and Christianity's understanding of marriage and chastity is intimately bound to its views on…

— Ross Douthat

In the end the recrudescence of racism on the right is conservatism's problem to solve, and it has to be solved independently…

— Ross Douthat

Institutional Christianity has had clear secular benefits to American life for hundreds of years. It's played both a prophetic role in terms…

— Ross Douthat

I think what you see a lot of in American religion, even in areas of American Christianity that don't go all the…

— Ross Douthat

I think it is very clear that, though great difference remained, evangelicals moved closer to Catholics, mainline Protestants and evangelical Protestants moved…

— Ross Douthat

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama represented somewhat different party factions, but they both embodied wonkery, a vision of competence and expertise governing…

— Ross Douthat

My mother converted when I was 16. She was the driving force behind religion in our family. So, I'm sure I was…

— Ross Douthat

On the evidence we have, the meritocratic ideal ends up being just as undemocratic as the old emphasis on inheritance and tradition,…

— Ross Douthat

Like most places, America has always had potent strains of anti-Semitism - crude and polished, K.K.K. and country club. But unlike many…

— Ross Douthat

“As a purely intellectual matter, nothing was suddenly discovered in the 1960s that contradicted the biblical witness on fornication, adultery, and homosexuality,…

— Ross Douthat

“In this America, too, the Christian teaching that every human soul is unique and precious has been stressed, by the prophets of…

— Ross Douthat

“What he felt during his Spanish encounter with left-wing anti-Christianity was similar to his reactions to the anti-Christianity of the right. The…

— Ross Douthat

“[M]ost Americans are still drawing some water from the Christian well. But a growing number are inventing their own versions of what…

— Ross Douthat

“Christians can disagree about public policy in good faith, and a libertarian and a social democrat can both claim to be living…

— Ross Douthat

I don't think of 'heretic' as a pejorative term - necessarily.

— Ross Douthat

The prosperity gospel, in its various forms, has always been with us and always will. But that reality is no less problematic…

— Ross Douthat

Where conservative Catholics have the power to resist what seem like false ideas or disastrous innovations they must do so.

— Ross Douthat

“Among the tastemakers and power brokers and intellectual agenda setters of late-twentieth-century America, orthodox Christianity was completely déclassé.”

— Ross Douthat