Ross Douthat Quotes About Church

Quotes about: Church

• During a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly burst out: “Your eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” The cardinal, the anecdote goes, responded ruefully: “Your 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.”

  Ross Douthat

  Years, Catholic, Church

  "A Time for Contrition". www.nytimes.com. March 28, 2010.

• 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.

  Ross Douthat

  Christian, Thinking, Differences

  Source: www.christianpost.com

• 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.

  Ross Douthat

  Christian, Thinking, Israel

  Source: www.christianpost.com

• 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.

  Ross Douthat

  Mother, Historical, Catholic

  Source: www.christianpost.com

• I read a lot of G.K. Chesterton. It was a fairly conventional intellectual path to the Catholic church, I would say.

  Ross Douthat

  Catholic, Intellectual, Church

  Source: www.christianpost.com

• 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.

  Ross Douthat

  Country, Years, Community

  Source: www.christianpost.com

• 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.

  Ross Douthat

  Christian, Running, Successful

  Source: www.christianpost.com

• 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.

  Ross Douthat

  Mean, People, Age

  Source: www.christianpost.com

• 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.

  Ross Douthat

  House, Church, Scandal

  Source: www.christianpost.com

• 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.

  Ross Douthat

  Catholic, Church, Stronger

  Source: www.christianpost.com

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