Campbell David E. - American grace: how religion divides and unites us

Praise for American Grace

A big, multifaceted work.... Intellectually powerful... The answers offered by Putnam and Campbell deserve the attention of everyone concerned about Americas future cohesion.

Robert Wright, The New York Times Book Review

An instant classic, as academically authoritative as it is brilliantly entertaining.

John J. DiIulio, Jr., America

After a seemingly endless procession of tendentious and hotly argued books espousing the new atheism and blaming religion for all that is wrong with the world, American Grace comes as a welcome balm, offering a reasoned discussion of religious and public life.

Wilfred M. McClay, The Wall Street Journal

In American Grace, Robert Putnam and David Campbell... give us a comprehensive look at religion in our country and reach conclusions that will provide much thought for reflection. For those interested in the role of religion in society, this is an important book to read.

Jim Wallis, President of Sojourners and author of Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street

The most successfully argued sociological study of American religion in more than half a century.

David A. Hollinger, San Francisco Chronicle

Perhaps the most sweeping look yet at contemporary American religion.

Michelle Boorstein, The Washington Post

A superb work of scholarship that engages, invigorates, and refines the public debate.

Peter Berkowitz, Policy Review

A must read.

Fr. Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC, President Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame

An elegant narrative built on a solid foundation of massive research. This surprising, absolutely fascinating, and ultimately uplifting portrait of the changing role of religion in American life... is a triumph.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

This book will be an essential part of the continuing conversation about faith in our country.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor of Philosophy, Princeton, and author of Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

A scrupulously researched, extensively documented, and utterly clear book filled with findings that should rattle the assumptions of anyone, religious or secular, who cares about religion in American public life.

Peter Steinfels, The American Prospect

An instant canonical text.

Cornel West, Center for African American Studies, Princeton University

An original and thought-provoking work.

Jon Meacham, author of American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation

The most comprehensive, balanced, and up-to-date treatise on the state of American religion I know of.

R. Stephen Warner, The Christian Century

[A] finely grained and judicious study, sure to become a classic work of social analysis.... Riveting and sometimes disconcerting.

Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs

A treasure trove.... Readers of all religious persuasions and those with none will find much to marvel at and learn from in the pages of American Grace .

Darrell Turner, National Catholic Reporter

Very likely to be the standard work on this important subject for a long time.

Joseph Losos, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The best overview of American religion in the last half century that I have ever read.

Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, President, Union for Reform Judaism

Written with the explanatory care of a gentle parent... an accessible and soon-to-be irreplaceable volume on contemporary American religion.

Robert D. Francis, Journal of Lutheran Ethics

One of the best books on religion in America ever produced.

Lane Williams, Deseret News

This is a magisterial summary and an impressive analysis of the state of religious life in the United States today. Humanists who want to better understand their religious neighbors... should read this book.

James Croft, The Humanist

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To Kirsten, Katie, and Soren and

To Miriam, Gray, Gabriel, Noah, Alonso, and Gideon

Who grace our lives with their love

I n the 1950s, the Fraternal Order of Eagles teamed up with movie director Cecil B. DeMille for a unique promotion of the epic movie The Ten Commandments . In a form of reverse product placement, the Eagles and DeMille donated monuments of the biblical Ten Commandments to communities all around the country. Rather than putting a product in the movie, the primary symbol of the movie was instead placed in prominent locationsin public parks, in front of courthouses, and in the case of Texas on the grounds of the state capitol. These monuments reflected the zeitgeist, as the 1950s brought public, even government-sanctioned, expression of religion to the fore in many ways. This was also the decade in which In God We Trust became the official national motto, and the Pledge of Allegiance was amended to include the words under God.

Those monuments stood for decades without causing a fuss. In recent years, however, they have led to court battles over whether their location on publicly owned land violates the constitutional prohibition on a government establishment of religion. In other words, fifty years ago these displays were so noncontroversial that they could safely be used as a marketing ploy for a big-budget Hollywood

Something has changed.

In 1960, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy had to reassure Protestants that they could safely vote for a Catholic. (At the time 30 percent of Americans freely told pollsters that they would not vote for a Catholic as president.) At the same time, Kennedy won overwhelming support from his fellow Catholics, even though he explicitly disagreed with his church on a number of public issues. In 2004, America had another Catholic presidential candidatealso a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, also a highly decorated veteran, and also with the initials JFK. Like Kennedy, John (Forbes) Kerry also publicly disagreed with his church on at least one prominent issuein this case, abortion. But unlike Kennedy, Kerry split the Catholic vote with his Republican opponent, and lost handily among Catholics who frequently attend church. Kennedy would likely have found it inexplicable that Kerry not only lost to a Protestant, but in George W. Bush, an evangelical Protestant at that. Writing about the religious tensions manifested in the 1960 campaign, political scientist Philip Converse described the election as a flash of lightning which illuminated, but only momentarily, a darkened landscape. Kerrys candidacy was another flash of lightning, but the landscape it revealed had changed significantly. In 1960, religions role in politics was mostly a matter of something akin to tribal loyaltyCatholics and Protestants each supported their own. In order to win, Kennedy had to shatter the stained glass ceiling that had kept Catholics out of national elective office in a Protestant-majority nation. By the 2000s, how religious a person is had become more important as a political dividing line than which denomination he or she belonged to. Church-attending evangelicals and Catholics (and other religious groups too) have found common political cause. Voters who are not religious have also found common cause with one another, but on the opposite end of the political spectrum.