Review of Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious by Ross Douthat (Zondervan, 2025)
How seriously should we take a “boom in religion”? The thriller writer, wit, and Catholic priest Ronald Knox asked that question back in 1930. He had spotted that while interwar Britons loved chatting about religion, their habit did not actually translate into religious observance. Theirs was “not a religion of creeds and dogmas” and it did not result in “extreme measures, like going to church.” The more people drifted from orthodox Christianity and abandoned churches for cinemas and golf courses, the more they enjoyed the gassy “natural theology” that popular thinkers wrote about in the newspapers, which derived an undemanding faith from the patterns of the stars or the twinges of the human heart.
Donald Trump’s election has catalyzed a boom in religion much like the one Knox observed — full of discursive fizz but largely detached from doctrinal rigor, institutional commitment, or social realities. Although the president quickly moved to appoint the megachurch pastor Paula White-Cain to a newly revived National Faith Office, his personal faith is essentially a joking matter. He told the National Prayer Breakfast that his miraculous escape from assassination had boosted Don Junior’s faith “by 25 percent. And if you know him, that is a lot.”
The same cannot be said of Trump’s court, many of whom take every opportunity to parade their personal piety. A striking number of his prominent appointees are fervent Roman Catholics, who took to opening their inauguration hearings by commending themselves to their “Lord and Savior.” “God sent me President Trump,” mused Robert Kennedy Jr as he…
Auteur: Michael Ledger-Lomas
