Ross felt compelled to make the case for belief in God in Sunday’s NYT. Frankly, I think he was pushing on an open door. In my experience, Americans are not committed, hardened materialists; they are actually humble, undogmatic believers. By that, I mean they acknowledge the existence of a higher power, and occasionally try to negotiate with it, but they doubt their ability to fully understand it, particularly through the use of anachronistic rituals.
Douthat’s real problem with people he considers unbelievers is that, unlike their grandparents, they aren’t willing to accept the authority of supposedly sacred texts and practices without further examination based on logic, experience, and the scientific method. They want orthodox Christianity to justify itself by reference to common sense. What reasonable person would become a conservative Catholic by creating a metaphysical universe from scratch?
And then, of course, there is the Trump factor. The truth of religions should not be evaluated based on the behavior of their adherents, but who, really, can help it?