Mormons Among Douthat's Heretics

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has a new book out. It’s called Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, and it’s getting attention recently as a critique of what the author says is America’s diseased religious soul. Religion in America is suffering, says Douthat, and not as many religious Americans would suspect—not from erosion by atheism or apathy. In fact, American religion (by which he essentially means Christianity) is rotting from the inside out. The traditional impulses of Christianity are slowly being phased out, and other religious values—less inspired, less moral, and less socially constructive ones—are moving in. These new influences, Douthat argues, are at the root of many of America’s contemporary social and political problems. “America’s problem isn’t too much religion, or too little of it. It’s ‘bad religion.’”

Bad Religion, then, is a book—erudite but not academic—about religion’s influence on the social and moral health of the United States. What kind of influence do different kinds of Christianity have on American society? What kinds of religion are good for the country, and which are not? It’s a complex question, and Douthat gives a nuanced response: different stripes of Christianity contribute in different ways. Nonetheless, “orthodox” Christianity, he argues, has always provided the staying power that holds the country together. For Douthat, a conservative Catholic, orthodox Christianity means the “shared theological commitments that have defined the parameters of Christianity since the early Church.” This has been the Christianity of mainline Protestantism and eventually of Catholicism, and it is this orthodoxy, Douthat argues, that has the right blend of moral virtues to hold together “a teeming, diverse, and fissiparous nation.” The United States’ many heresies—the scores of American faiths that have broken with the ancient creeds, added or trivialized scripture, and turned from traditional Christian ethics—have given the country energy and vitality. But America’s underrated dogma, he says, has kept it somewhat harmonious and intact.