Ross Douthat Quotes

Christian attitudes are still important in a society even if they are no longer connected with belief.

As I have pointed out, it is the Christian tradition that is the most fundamental element in Western culture. It lies at the base not only of Western religion, but also of Western morals and Western social idealism.

Protestant Christianity ... tutored the first generations of Americans. It provided what we today would call the value system of the society.

Dutch values are based on Christianity, on Judaism, on humanism.

Society is a kind of parent to its members. If it, and they, are to thrive, its values must be clear, coherent and generally acceptable.

No true civilization can be expected permanently to continue which is not based on the great principles of Christianity.

In the battle for preserving sound social and moral norms, many religious institutions can no longer be counted as allies.

Civilization - and by this I do not mean talking cinemas and tinned food, nor even surgery and hygienic houses, but the whole moral and artistic organization of Europe - has not in itself the power of survival. It came into being through Christianity, and without it has no significance or power to command allegiance ... It is no longer possible, as it was in the time of Gibbon, to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis on which it rests ... Christianity ... is in greater need of combative strength than it has been for centuries.

Where I'm from, you learned about God before you learned to read and write. Our faith is what grounds us.

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.

Judeo-Christian revelation is not the negative influence secularists proclaim it to be. Rather, it is the taproot of our civilization.

Where there is not community, trust, respect, ethical behavior are difficult for the young to learn and for the old to maintain.

It is through Christianity that Judaism has really conquered the world. Christianity is the masterpiece of Judaism.

The whole inspiration of our civilization springs from the teachings of Christ and the lessons of the prophets. To read the Bible for these fundamentals is a necessity of American life.

The worlds of folklore and religion were so mingled in early twentieth venture German culture that even families who didn't go to church were often deeply Christian.

Society, by insisting on conventions, has merely insisted on certain convenient signs by which we may know that a man is considering, in daily life, the comfort of other people.

We can be reluctant to recognize how much of our culture was literary, particularly now that so many of the institutional purveyors of literature happily have joined in proclaiming its death. A substantial number of Americans who believe they worship God actually worship three major literary characters: the Yahweh of the J Writer (earliest author of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers), the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark, and Allah of the Koran.

I didn't know the extent of American obsession with Uganda until I got there and saw it. You ride in the plane and it's filled with American missionaries. Uganda is the No. 1 destination for American missionaries in the world.

Culture is everything. Culture is the way we dress, the way we carry our heads, the way we walk, the way we tie our ties - it is not only the fact of writing books or building houses.

Among many reasons for being stupid it may be urged, it is being like other people, and living like one's neighbours, and indeed without it, it may be difficult to love some neighbours as oneself: now seeing the necessity of being dull, you won't, I hope, take it amiss that you find me so.

For example, I'm a great fan of pornography, but I don't see any reason not to restrict it so that people walking down the street who hate pornography don't have full color pictures outside of movie theaters. Let them be in a different district. I'm kidding about pornography, but you get the point.

Religions are the exponents of the highest comprehension of life... within a given age in a given society... a basis for evaluating human sentiments. If feelings bring people nearer to the religion's ideal... they are good; if these estrange them from it, and oppose it, they are bad.

It's part of the buzz of the city among Christians. It wouldn't surprise me that it got to George Bush. He reads, he picks stuff up, he talks to people. And he's pretty serious about his own Christian beliefs.

While there are practical and sometimes moral reasons for the decomposition of the family, it coincides neither with what most people in society say they desire nor, especially in the case of children, with their best interests.

Christianity ruined emperors, but saved peoples.