Fri, Apr. 27, 2012 Posted:
02:58 PM EDT
In his new book, Bad Religion: How We
Became a Nation of Heretics, New York
Times columnist Ross Douthat argues that
orthodox American Christianity has weakened
since the 1950s to be replaced by a number of
heresies, both conservative and liberal. This
"bad religion" has resulted in adverse
consequences for American society, politics
and culture.
In a Thursday interview with The Christian
Post, Douthat talked more about his thesis,
responded to some criticisms, and discussed
how his diverse Christian upbringing
(charismatic, evangelical and Catholic) helped
inform the book.
The following is an edited transcript of that
conversation:
CP: If you graph the level of
industrialization of a country against its
level of religiosity, you find a pattern.
The higher the level of industrialization,
the lower the level of religiosity. Then you
have this outlier, the United States, which
has high industrialization and high
religiosity. Some have explained that by
saying religion in America is wide but
shallow. It's present everywhere, but
doesn't mean a whole lot to most people.
You're saying something different. The lake
is wide and deep, but the water is
contaminated. Is that an accurate metaphor?
Douthat: [Laughs] Something like that, yeah.
That's not a terrible metaphor. One of the
things I try to do in the book is take
seriously some of the forms of American
religion that people consider to be shallow
and try and figure out why they have such a
strong appeal and tease out the theology they
actually represent.
The big theme of my book is 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.
For instance, I spend a fair amount of time
in the book talking about the prosperity
gospel – the, sort of, "pray and grow rich" –
which is an approach to theology that both a
lot of serious Christians and a lot of secular
liberals tend to laugh at or roll their eyes
over and say, "how can anyone seriously
believe that?" I try and tease out what it is
about prosperity theology that people find
appealing and the extent to which it really is
trying to address deep theological issues. For
a lot of people, it's a solution to the
question of evil: "why does a good God allow
bad things to happen to good people?"
Prosperity theology provides a kind of answer
to that.
I try to do the same thing when I turn to
what people think of as New Age, self-helpy
kind of religion, the sort of Deepak Chopra
style of faith. I'm very critical of it, but
I'm also trying to recognize the root of its
appeal.
CP: In the chapter on prosperity
theology, you pay particular attention to
Joel Osteen. You say there is a "blurry
line" between Rick Warren and Joel Osteen,
even though Warren has condemned prosperity
theology. What did you mean by that?
Douthat: I should say that I'm an admirer of
Rick Warren and I do quote him in the book
specifically condemning prosperity theology.
But, 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. I think that just exposes
Christians to a constant temptation to think
about the ministry more as a business than
they sometimes should.
I quote from a scholar the idea of "more
money, more ministry," which has become a very
powerful idea for a lot of American
evangelicals over the last 50 years. It's a
true idea. Right? There are all kinds of great
things that megachurches and successful
fundraising appeals can allow you to do,
especially in terms of overseas charity work,
and so on.
I'm just arguing that American Christians
need to recognize the temptations that can
expose you to as well. It can make churches
dependent on a superstar pastor model that is
hard to sustain over the long haul and it can
make Christians focus purely on externals –
who has the largest congregation and who can
build the biggest megachurch and so on, which
is only part of what Christians should be
about.
CP: One reaction to that has been the
house church movement, which has been a move
away from traditional institutions and the
"more money, more ministry" model. Do you
think the house church movement is a proper
corrective, or do they have their own
heresies?
Douthat: 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.
Yes, in many ways that kind of more
small-scale, intimate approach to faith can
absolutely be a necessary corrective to the
"bigger is better" ideas in American religion.
The danger there is ... and, again, I'm a
Roman Catholic writing about American
Christianity as a whole so I bring a certain
set of Catholic biases to this debate, but 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.
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. 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.
CP: In your description of orthodoxy,
you include the trinity, virgin birth,
substitutionary atonement, the resurrection,
and the authority of scripture. Those things
sound like mainstream Christianity to me,
so, where are the heresies?
Douthat: The argument I make is, one, fewer
people do believe in those core doctrines.
And, two, the churches that were more likely
to believe in those core doctrines have
weakened overall in the last 50 years. I think
it's more apparent if you step back and look
at American Christianity as a whole.
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. So, I think the kind of
small "o" orthodoxy that I'm talking about
encompasses people in historical Protestant
traditions, Roman Catholics and the Eastern
Orthodox. From that definition, I think you
can see a steep decline over the last 40
years.
CP: One of the criticisms of your
book is that you select only the evidence
that supports your thesis ...
Douthat: [Laughs] Because, what? The
alternative would be to select evidence that
doesn't support my thesis? Sorry, go on.
CP: They're saying America did not
really have this mainstream orthodoxy, to
the extent that you claim, in the 1950s, and
there is not nearly as much divergence since
the 1950s.
Douthat: Yes. And I think that those
criticisms are wrong. [Laughs] Not
surprisingly.
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, a couple of things were pretty clear
about that era. One, 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, and
all these things, than did, let's say, Harry
Emerson Fosdick and Aimee Semple McPherson, to
pick similar examples from the 1920s. The fact
that the 1950s were defined by
neo-evangelicalism and, with Niebuhr, the
mainline neo-orthodoxy, you can see, in both
cases, that convergence taking place towards a
kind of Christian center.
And then, with Catholicism and Protestantism,
you can find plenty of evangelical polemicists
who were still calling the Pope the
anti-Christ, and so on, down to the election
of John F. Kennedy. But, as my friend Alan Jacobs pointed out,
responding to some of the criticisms of my
book, he started with a big photograph of
Billy Graham with Cardinal Cushing of Boston,
the Catholic Cardinal who had become friends
and allies starting with Graham's first
crusade in Boston in 1950. If you don't think
Billy Graham and Cardinal Cushing are central
figures of mid-century religion, then I don't
know what kind of definition of mid-century
religion you are taking.
So, 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.
It's just silly to look at the incredibly
steep decline in the mainline and the clear
institutional weakening of Catholicism in the
1960s and 70s and pretend that something
really big didn't change then. It did change.
There really was a significant institutional
decline. As I say in the book, it's an
interpretation of an era. It's not a
comprehensive portrait. Obviously, America is
a big and complicated country with a lot of
things going on at any given time. But, I
think I'm working pretty close to the
mainstream of American religious
historiography when I portray that era as a
period of convergence on the one hand and
significant institutional strength on the
other.
CP: One of the heresies you mention
is Christian nationalism, this melding of
Christianity with America's purposes and the
notion that "God is on our side." Can a
Christian be patriotic without being
heretical?
Douthat: Absolutely. The point I try to make
in the chapter is that too is a blurry line.
It's not always clear where a healthy
patriotism shades into a dangerous
nationalism.
I think Christians are always going to be
walking that line, whether they are American
Christians or citizens of any nation on Earth.
But, 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 patriotism a little too far.
For liberals the temptation is to say the
purpose of politics is to straightforwardly
bring the kingdom of God to Earth. For
conservatives, I talk about Glenn Beck, the
temptation is more apocalyptic and messianic,
it's the temptation to say we did have a
covenant with God, a literal covenant
beginning with the Founding, and we are, like
Israel in the Old Testament, falling away from
it.
The distinction I try to make is, I use
Abraham Lincoln's line, that 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.
CP: Do I understand correctly that
you used to be evangelical?
Douthat: As a kid, we were involved both with
various aspects of charismatic Christianity
and then we were involved briefly at a small
evangelical church that people were trying to
start at Yale University.
CP: OK, so you didn't grow up in a
traditional Catholic family?
Douthat: No, I grew up, baptized
Episcopalian, my parents were Episcopalian,
and then starting when I was about seven,
eight years old, we started attending a sort
of charismatic healing services with a woman
who had a healing ministry in Connecticut. And
that led us into both Pentecostalism,
evangelicalism and places where they
overlapped. So, for instance, we drove to
Toronto for the famous "Toronto blessing." A
Pentecostalist outpouring at a Vineyard church
there, near the Toronto airport. I think I was
about 13.
We knew Eric Metaxas. My parents knew him and
I knew him a little as well when I was about
13, because he was involved with some of these
evangelical forays at Yale University. I
didn't see him for 20 years and we actually,
very, very recently, reconnected.
CP: So, you chose Catholicism as an
adult?
Douthat: I was 17. So, I'm in the unusual
position of being neither a cradle Catholic
nor, technically, an adult convert. But, I
hope that I, at least, passed the age of
reason [laughs].
CP: Why did you choose Catholicism?
Douthat: My 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.
I read a lot of G.K. Chesterton. It was a
fairly conventional intellectual path to the
Catholic church, I would say.
CP: Is there an extent to which, in
this book, you are writing about yourself,
as well as the nation? Is there a personal
search towards orthodoxy and away from
heresy that underlies this?
Douthat: Well, I don't want to suggest that
... I'm trying to start with a broad
definition of orthodoxy, so I'm not trying to
suggest, for instance, that whatever
evangelical churches that my parents were part
of were heretics, or something. I'm not
writing a story in which my childhood
experience is a journey from heresy into
orthodoxy.
I do think, though, that that background did
give me a sense of the incredible diversity
and complexity of American religion, which not
everybody, especially not everybody in my line
of work, necessarily has.
I think that one of the themes of the book is
that, 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. And, that's why I
wanted to write about somebody like Elizabeth
Gilbert and "eat-pray-love," and somebody like
Joel Osteen. These figures who aren't culture
war figures exactly, but who I think are
enormously important to understanding religion
in America today.
CP: In the introduction, you say that
you're writing the book for a broad
audience, not just a Christian audience. Why
should non-Christians be interested in
reading your book?
Douthat: 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. The
story, in part, that I'm telling is a story in
which many things about American life, that
even secular people consider good, have flowed
from the presence of a robust, resilient
institutional Christianity.
As a corollary, I'm also saying that the idea
of a post-religious society is a fantasy,
ultimately. Human beings are, by nature,
religious in various ways. And so, the fact
that institutional churches have gone into
decline doesn't mean that we're going to enter
some purely secular age. Secular people need
to be aware of that. They need to understand
that what replaces Christianity isn't going to
be Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and
so on. It's going to be something else and
something they may not like very much.
CP: Your interview with Bill
Maher was interesting.
Douthat: Was it? [Laughs]
CP: Maher used this phrase "secular
religion" to explain the crimes of atheist
totalitarianism in the 20th century. You
were about to respond to that before he
moved onto something else.
Douthat: All I would have said was a
continuation of a point I was trying to make
to him. Which was, 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.
If you're willing to recognize the religious
element in one secular ideology, you need to
be able to recognize it in your own. I think
that secular liberals need to recognize that
they are still, often, hanging their worldview
on what are metaphysical ideas. The idea of
universal human rights may not seem as weird
to some people as the idea of a personal God,
but it is still a metaphysical idea that
liberalism, at least as we know it, couldn't
really survive without. So, that was the point
I was trying to make to him. 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.
