--- title: "4 American Christianity Quotes By Ross Douthat" description: "4 American Christianity quotes by Ross Douthat. Plus more from Ross Douthat and more American Christianity sayings from other authors." image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c6b/ross-douthat-2949_areas_i-think-what-you-see-a-lot-of-in-america_576636.jpg" --- > [I think what you see a lot of in American religion, even in areas of American Christianity that don't go all the…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/i-think-what-you-see-a-lot-of-in-american-religion-even-in-areas-of/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c6b/ross-douthat-2949_areas_i-think-what-you-see-a-lot-of-in-america_576636.jpg) > [ “\[M\]ost Americans are still drawing some water from the Christian well. But a growing number are inventing their own versions of what… ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/m-ost-americans-are-still-drawing-some-water-from-the-christian-well/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/fd7/ross-douthat-2949_american-life_m-ost-americans-are-still-drawing-some-w_743522.jpg) > [It's clearly the case that there's not some moment in American history when every evangelical is holding hands with every Catholic who…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/it-s-clearly-the-case-that-there-s-not-some-moment-in-american/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/7a8/ross-douthat-2949_all-kinds_it-s-clearly-the-case-that-there-s-not-s_1340356.png) > [I grew up in a household that spent most of my childhood on a religious pilgrimage through American Christianity.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/i-grew-up-in-a-household-that-spent-most-of-my-childhood-on-a/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/e96/ross-douthat-2949_american_i-grew-up-in-a-household-that-spent-most_1402450.png) ## More by Ross Douthat > [Human beings seek community, and permanent openness is hard to sustain.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/human-beings-seek-community-and-permanent-openness-is-hard-to-sustain/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) > [The American intelligentsia has been pretty secular for a long time. There have always been figures like Oprah Winfrey, let's put it that way.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/the-american-intelligentsia-has-been-pretty-secular-for-a-long-time/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) > [On the evidence we have, the meritocratic ideal ends up being just as undemocratic as the old emphasis on inheritance and tradition, and it…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/on-the-evidence-we-have-the-meritocratic-ideal-ends-up-being-just-as/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) > [“The physical vanity of the diet-and-exercise obsessive is recast as the pursuit of a kind of ritual purity, hedged about with taboos and guilt…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/the-physical-vanity-of-the-diet-and-exercise-obsessive-is-recast-as/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) > [There were times at Harvard when I actually longed to hang out with a few more Trotskyists, rather than yet another set of future…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/there-were-times-at-harvard-when-i-actually-longed-to-hang-out-with-a/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) > [Many things about American life, that even secular people consider good, have flowed from the presence of a robust, resilient institutional Christianity.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/many-things-about-american-life-that-even-secular-people-consider/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/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 "novelty and…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/what-he-felt-during-his-spanish-encounter-with-left-wing-anti/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) > [“In an age of stagnant or declining birthrates, too, these communities’ willingness to heed the admonition to be fruitful and multiply has led to…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/in-an-age-of-stagnant-or-declining-birthrates-too-these-communities/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/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…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/america-s-problem-isn-t-too-much-religion-or-too-little-of-it-it-s/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) > [I do think you can see, throughout American history, this temptation, and it's both a liberal and a conservative temptation, to take a healthy…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/i-do-think-you-can-see-throughout-american-history-this-temptation/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) > [Where conservative Catholics have the power to resist what seem like false ideas or disastrous innovations they must do so.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/where-conservative-catholics-have-the-power-to-resist-what-seem-like/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) > [It is not white nationalism to believe that countries like the United States would be better off with more babies. That belief can be…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/it-is-not-white-nationalism-to-believe-that-countries-like-the-united/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) > [Most people want the convenience of the Internet far more than they want the private spaces that older forms of communication protected.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/most-people-want-the-convenience-of-the-internet-far-more-than-they/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) > [If you live under a system that claims to have high ideals but seems ineradicably opposed to your own people's flourishing, the desire for…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/if-you-live-under-a-system-that-claims-to-have-high-ideals-but-seems/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) > [Our crisis of the house divided was a Christian civil war.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/our-crisis-of-the-house-divided-was-a-christian-civil-war/) [Ross Douthat](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ross-douthat/) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "ItemList", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/american-christianity/ross-douthat/#itemlist", "name": "4 American Christianity Quotes By Ross Douthat", "numberOfItems": 4, "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I think what you see a lot of in American religion, even in areas of American Christianity that don't go all the way with Osteen to the idea that God wants you to have this big house and so on, the nature of American religion right now, the fact that it is so non-denominational and post-denominational, the most successful churches have to be run more like businesses than ever before. 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But a growing number are inventing their own versions of what Christianity means, abandoning the nuances of traditional theology in favor of religions that stroke their egos and indulge or even celebrate their worst impulses. . . . Both doubters and believers stand to lose if religion in the age of heresy turns out to be complicit in our fragmented communities, our collapsing families, our political polarization, and our weakened social ties. Both doubters and believers will inevitably suffer from a religious culture that supplies more moral license than moral correction, more self-satisfaction than self-examination, more comfort than chastisement. . . . Many of the overlapping crises in American life . . . can be traced to the impulse to emphasize one particular element of traditional Christianity—one insight, one doctrine, one teaching or tradition—at the expense of all the others. The goal is always progress: a belief system that’s simpler or more reasonable, more authentic or more up-to-date. Yet the results often vindicate the older Christian synthesis. Heresy sets out to be simpler and more appealing and more rational, but it often ends up being more extreme. . . . The boast of Christian orthodoxy . . . has always been its fidelity to the whole of Jesus. Its dogmas and definitions seek to encompass the seeming contradictions in the gospel narratives rather than evading them. . . . These [heretical] simplifications have usually required telling a somewhat different story about Jesus than the one told across the books of the New Testament. Sometimes this retelling has involved thinning out the Christian canon, eliminating tensions by subtracting them. . . . More often, though, it’s been achieved by straightforwardly rewriting or even inventing crucial portions of the New Testament account. . . . “Religious man was born to be saved,” [Philip Rieff] wrote, but “psychological man is born to be pleased.” . . . In 2005, . . . . Smith and Denton found no evidence of real secularization among their subjects: 97 percent of teenagers professed some sort of belief in the divine, 71 percent reported feeling either “very” or “somewhat” close to God, and the vast majority self-identified as Christian. There was no sign of deep alienation from their parents’ churches, no evidence that the teenagers in the survey were poised to convert outright to Buddhism or Islam, and no sign that real atheism was making deep inroads among the young. But neither was there any evidence of a recognizably orthodox Christian faith. “American Christianity,” Smith and Denton suggested, is “either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself,” or else is “actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith.” They continued: “Most religious teenagers either do not really comprehend what their own religious traditions say they are supposed to believe, or they do understand it and simply do not care to believe it.” . . . An ego that’s never wounded, never trammeled or traduced—and that’s taught to regard its deepest impulses as the promptings of the divine spirit—can easily turn out to be an ego that never learns sympathy, compassion, or real wisdom. And when contentment becomes an end unto itself, the way that human contents express themselves can look an awful lot like vanity and decadence. . . . For all their claims to ancient wisdom, there’s nothing remotely countercultural about the Tolles and Winfreys and Chopras. They’re telling an affluent, appetitive society exactly what it wants to hear: that all of its deepest desires are really God’s desires, and that He wouldn’t dream of judging. This message encourages us to justify our sins by spiritualizing them. . . . Our vaunted religiosity is real enough, but our ostensible Christian piety doesn’t have the consequences a casual observer might expect. . . . We nod to God, and then we do as we please.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Ross Douthat" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ross-douthat/m-ost-americans-are-still-drawing-some-water-from-the-christian-well/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/fd7/ross-douthat-2949_american-life_m-ost-americans-are-still-drawing-some-w_743522.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/fd7/ross-douthat-2949_american-life_m-ost-americans-are-still-drawing-some-w_743522.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/fd7/ross-douthat-2949_american-life_m-ost-americans-are-still-drawing-some-w_743522.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“[M]ost Americans are still drawing some water from the Christian well. 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