Ross Douthat
Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Script error: No such module "Infobox".Template:Template otherScript error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". Ross Gregory Douthat (Template:IPAc-en Script error: No such module "Respell".;[1][2] born November 28, 1979)[3] is a conservative American author and New York Times columnist.Template:Efn He was a senior editor of The Atlantic. He has written on religion, politics, and society.
Early life and education
Ross Gregory Douthat was born November 28, 1979,[2] in San Francisco, California, and grew up in New Haven, Connecticut.[4] As an adolescent, Douthat converted to Pentecostalism and then, with the rest of his family,[5] to Catholicism.[6] Douthat has described his conversion to Catholicism as being influenced by the writing of C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and J. R. R. Tolkien.[7][8]
His mother is a writer.[9] His great-grandfather was the poet and Governor Charles Wilbert Snow of Connecticut.[10] His father, Charles Douthat, is a partner in a New Haven law firm[11][12] and a poet.[13]
Douthat attended Hamden Hall, a private high school in Hamden, Connecticut. Douthat graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University in 2002, where he was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. While there he contributed to The Harvard Crimson and edited The Harvard Salient.[14]
Career
Douthat is a regular columnist for The New York Times.[15] In April 2009, he became the youngest regular op-ed writer in The New York Times after replacing Bill Kristol as a conservative voice on the Times editorial page.[16][17] Since 2007, he has been the film critic for National Review.[8]
Before joining The New York Times, he was a senior editor at The Atlantic.[18] He has published books on the decline of religion in American society, the role of Harvard University in creating an American ruling class and other topics related to religion, politics and society. His book Grand New Party (2008), which he co-wrote with Reihan Salam, was described by New York Times commentator David Brooks as the "best single roadmap of where the Republican Party should and is likely to head."[19] Douthat's The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success (2020) received positive reviews in The New York Times[20] and National Review.[21] Douthat frequently appeared on the video debate site Bloggingheads.tv until 2012.
In 2025, Douthat began hosting the Times Opinion podcast Interesting Times, which explores the New Right and broader evolutions in American politics.[22]
Douthat has written in support of banning abortion, arguing that science shows that a zygote (a fertilized egg) is a distinct human and that to destroy one is to kill a human.[23]
In 2025, Douthat published Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.[24]
Beliefs
Douthat writes: "What I’m looking for when I gamble on a world-picture is something that makes sense of the four major features of existence that give rise to religious questions – the striking fact of cosmic order, our distinctive consciousness, our strong moral sense and thirst for justice and the persistent varieties of supernatural experience. ... And, no surprise here, I think the combination of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament is the darkest swan in the sea of religious stories — the compendium of stories, histories, poems and prophecies and parables and (yes) eyewitness accounts that most suggests an actual unfolding divine revelation, and whose unlikely but overwhelming role as a history-shaping force endures even in what is supposed to be our oh-so-disenchanted world."[25]
Personal life
In 2007, Douthat married Abigail Tucker, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun.[11] Douthat is a Catholic Christian.[6][7][8] He and his family live in New Haven, Connecticut.[26]
Douthat has written that he suffers from chronic Lyme disease.[27][28]
Published works
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- Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream. With Salam, Reihan. New York: Doubleday. 2008. Template:ISBN.
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- The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success. Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 2020. (The paperback edition, issued in 2021, is titled: The Decadent Society: America Before and After the Pandemic.) Template:ISBN
- The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery. Convergent Books. October 26, 2021. Template:ISBN
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Notes
References
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External links
- Pages with script errors
- 1979 births
- Living people
- 21st-century American journalists
- 21st-century American male writers
- 21st-century American memoirists
- 21st-century American non-fiction writers
- 21st-century Roman Catholics
- American critics of atheism
- American film critics
- American magazine editors
- American male bloggers
- American bloggers
- American male journalists
- American male non-fiction writers
- American political writers
- American Roman Catholic writers
- The Atlantic (magazine) people
- Catholics from Connecticut
- Converts to Pentecostal denominations
- Converts to Roman Catholicism from Evangelicalism
- Hamden Hall Country Day School alumni
- Harvard College alumni
- The Harvard Crimson people
- Journalists from Washington, D.C.
- National Review people
- The New York Times columnists
- Writers from New Haven, Connecticut
- Writers from San Francisco