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How Religion Is Reshaping Our Civic and Political Lives
Simon & Schuster
October 2010
On Sale: October 19, 2010
416 pages
ISBN: 1416566716
EAN: 9781416566717
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Religion
American Grace is a major achievement, a
groundbreaking examination of religion in America.
Unique among nations, America is deeply
religious, religiously diverse, and remarkably tolerant. But
in recent decades the nation's religious landscape has been
reshaped. America has experienced three seismic
shocks, say Robert Putnam and David Campbell. In the 1960s,
religious observance plummeted. Then in the 1970s and 1980s,
a conservative reaction produced the rise of evangelicalism
and the Religious Right. Since the 1990s, however, young
people, turned off by that linkage between faith and
conservative politics, have abandoned organized religion.
The result has been a growing polarization—the ranks of
religious conservatives and secular liberals have swelled,
leaving a dwindling group of religious moderates in between.
At the same time, personal interfaith ties are
strengthening. Interfaith marriage has increased while
religious identities have become more fluid. Putnam and
Campbell show how this denser web of personal ties brings
surprising interfaith tolerance, notwithstanding the
so-called culture wars. American Grace is
based on two of the most comprehensive surveys ever
conducted on religion and public life in America. It
includes a dozen in-depth profiles of diverse congregations
across the country, which illuminate how the trends
described by Putnam and Campbell affect the lives of real
Americans. Nearly every chapter of American Grace
contains a surprise about American religious life. Among
them: • Between one-third and one-half of all
American marriages are interfaith; • Roughly
one-third of Americans have switched religions at some point
in their lives; • Young people are more opposed to
abortion than their parents but more accepting of gay
marriage; • Even fervently religious Americans
believe that people of other faiths can go to heaven;
• Religious Americans are better neighbors than
secular Americans: more generous with their time and
treasure even for secular causes—but the explanation has
less to do with faith than with their communities of faith;
• Jews are the most broadly popular religious group
in America today. American Grace promises to be the most important book
in decades about American religious life and an essential
book for understanding our nation today.
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