Is Ross Douthat Our C.S. Lewis?

I am aware that the question I have posed in the title will leave some FPR readers apoplectic, clutching their dog-eared copies of That Hideous Strength in horror. Allow me a moment to explain. I come to praise Douthat, not to bury him.

First off, Ross suffers no delusions of grandeur. When I spoke with him about his new book Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious I pointed out some parallels to C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Douthat quipped, “We could call it a pale imitation of Mere Christianity…I am trying to do something more like Mere Religion.” Whereas Lewis made the case for Christianity explicitly, Douthat’s Believe is a case for the plausibility of religion in general, a sign of how post-Christian we have become.