Contemporary Religion in America
Bibliography

Here is an annotated bibliography for my students in the study of Contemporary Religion in America. Pertinent links on this subject are also included. Return to the main Contemporary Religion in America page or visit the Schedule page for this course.

Textbooks and Introductions

For the Fall Semester, 2002, the first textbook for the course is Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War II, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. This work is highly informative and thought-provoking. Prof. Wuthnow has sifted through a lot of survey data and sociological interpretation; his sensitive and skillful analysis of this material is impressive. It is not a college textbook that loses its value after the semester is over. For a brilliant analysis of religious developments before World War II, see Herberg just below.
The second textbook is a classic older work that made a great contribution to the analysis of American religious development, Will Herberg, Protestant--Catholic--Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology. Revised edition. Garden City: Anchor Books, 1960. Reprint 1983. This is an excellent, thought-provoking book packed with information and bibliography. Herberg brilliantly interprets the role of religious identity among the many thousands of immigrants who came in large waves to America and gradually assimilated to the American way of life usually over the course of three generations. I highly recommend this book.
Sidney E. Mead, The Nation with the Soul of a Church. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1975. This is a wonderfully informative and insightful collection of essays.
- Particularly brilliant and engaging is the essay on "Neither Church nor State: Reflections on James Madison's 'Line of Separation'" (chapter V). Prof. Mead reminds us that "the Church" in the European sense never existed in the United States, neither did "the State" in the European sense ever exist here. Consequently, Thomas Jefferson's metaphor of "the wall of separation between Church and State" to represent the First Amendment of the Constitution is wrong-headed and leads us into an intellectual fog. We will understand the religion clauses in the First Amendment more clearly by following Madison's idea "to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority."
- Prof. Mead's presentation of the Enlightenment (with a capital "E") as the religion of the Republic is helpful, but his thought that a powerful tension exists within people trying to be both good citizens and good Christians is less enlightening. That we each play multiple social roles and even have multiple identities does not necessarily give rise to powerful internal tensions and conflicts. His use of the term "sectarian" for mainstream religionists rather than for non-conformists who reject enforcement powers for religious entities seems odd. Prof. Mead's criticisms of Will Herberg also do not seem well taken. Despite some disagreements or differences of perspective, I warmly recommend this little book.
A wide-ranging collection of articles offering sociological analysis of contemporary religion in America is edited by noted authority on American religion Wade Clark Roof, Americans and Religions in the Twenty-First Century. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 558. Thousand Oaks: Sage Periodicals Press, July 1998. Some articles are insightful and informative, others are somewhat tendentious and propagandistic. An index is included, although it is limited in scope. I will mention just a couple articles here.
- Martin E. Marty deals with the important subject of symbolic boundaries, including their blurring and adjustment, in his article, "Revising the Map of American Religion" (pp. 13-27). Prof. Marty is a highly regarded authority on American religion, but I do not always find him lucid and compelling. Nevertheless, his contributions are important.
- Enjoyable and informative was the article by Juan Eduardo Campo on "American Pilgrimage Landscapes" (pp. 40-56). He explores American participation in pilgrimage, analyzed as stimulated and guided by organized religion, or civil religion, or cultural religion.
- Donald E. Miller is overly enthusiastic about his subject to the point of being propagandistic, but he provides valuable information on the trend of "new paradigm" churches in "Postdenominational Christianity in the Twenty-First Century" (pp. 196-210).
- Mark A. Shibley covers some of the same ground as Miller, with similar enthusiasm, but with more thoughtful and vigorous analysis and insight, in "Contemporary Evangelicals: Born-Again and World Affirming" (pp. 67-87).
A typical textbook approach to contemporary American religion is the work by Denise L. Carmody and John T. Carmody, Exploring American Religion. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1990. This book contains some very good sections as well as quotations and stories that are both informative and meaningful. Part Three does not seem to maintain consistently the high level of perceptive analysis that one finds in Parts One and Two, IMHO. This work is appropriate for self-study as well.
A more sociologically oriented textbook (in comparison to the approach taken to American religion by Carmody and Carmody) is the work of Catherine L. Albanese, America Religion and Religions. Second edition. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1992. My students did not find this writer to be very lucid, unlike the work of Carmody and Carmody. The book does not seem to look on American-style pluralism with much favor.

Religion, State, and Society in Interaction

An important, heavily sociological, contribution to our general subject is Peter L. Berger, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural. New York: Anchor Books, 1990. I found this work to be interesting, enlightening, and compelling. This book is much more accessible to the non-specialist than some of his other books, such as The Sacred Canopy or The Social Construction of Reality (with Thomas Luckmann). My own intellectual perspective is strongly influenced by Berger's insights from the sociology of knowledge.
Some very thought-provoking and interesting articles can be found in Religion, Mobilization, and Social Action, edited by Anson Shupe and Bronislaw Misztal, Westport: Praeger, 1998. The development of the concept of "fundamentalism" and the rethinking of the older paradigm of "secularization" receive helpful discussion. The application of rational choice theory and marketplace paradigms to the operation and growth of religious organizations is also covered. Several of the articles on the religious aspects of social change movements in various parts of the world were outstanding, especially the treatment of the different universes of discourse in northern Ireland by Ronald J. McAllister.
The intense transformative energy with which religion, society, politics, and marketplace continue to interact with each other is well researched, documented and described by two journalists with sociology training in Richard Cimino and Don Lattin, Shopping for Faith: American Religion in the New Millennium, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 1998. A CD-ROM is included supplying an electronic version of the book.

The Secularization Thesis

The secularization thesis has played a major role for many in charting the trajectory of religion in relation to state and society. The thesis proposed that the growth of scientific research, technology, and modern approaches to life would gradually eliminate the influence of religion. At least Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and others hoped so. Developments since the Iranian Revolution in the 1970's contradicted this hope. Increasingly this negative view of the role of religion in modern life is being called into question.

Jeffrey K. Hadden, "Religion and the Quest for Meaning and Order: Old Paradigms, New Realities," Sociological Focus, 28/1 (February, 1995), 83-100, makes a valuable contribution in terms of both information and perspective. Reading it carefully can greatly improve your understanding of the relation of religion to modernity.
Peter L. Berger edits a useful collection of essays analyzing the growing sacralization of the modern world in The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999.
- Particularly insightful on the fundamental ideas bound up in the secularization thesis is the essay by Grace Davie, "Europe: The Exception That Proves the Rule?"
- Other essays consider the place of particular religious movements in the modern world order, such as Roman Catholicism, Evangelical Protestantism, Judaism, and Political Islam. The role of religion in China is also treated.

The American Experiment of Liberty and Pluralism

Richard E. Wentz, The Culture of Religious Pluralism. Boulder: Westview Press, 1998, deals with the development of American-style pluralism and current threats to our pluralistic perspective. Students find Prof. Wentz's work challenging to read, but his work is worth reading.
Interesting essays on the pluralistic foundations of American life can be found in Religion and the Public Good: A Bicentennial Forum, foreword by John F. Wilson, Macon: Mercer University Press, 1988. I particularly recommend the following contributions.
- Arlin M. Adams, "Doctrine of Accommodation and the Religious Clauses of the Constitution," pp. 113-122.
- Robert N. Bellah, "The Kingdom of God in America: Language of Faith, Language of Nation, Language of Empire," pp. 41-61.
- William Lee Miller, "Religion and the Constitution," pp. 1-22.
Another interesting work by the prolific and lucid sociological researcher Robert Wuthnow is Christianity and Civil Society: The Contemporary Debate, Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1996. Prof. Wuthnow makes good use of survey data and sociological insights to urge commitment to civility as a crucial element in our pluralism.
The interpretation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments by the Supreme Court since the 1940's has had immense impact on religious life in the United States.
- Read Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black's interpretation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments in the 1947 decision Everson v. Board of Education of the Township of Ewing, 330 U.S. 1 or access other Supreme Court decisions at the Legal Information Institute's Supreme Court Collection. Wentz, The Culture of Religious Pluralism, pp. 48f, finds some serious confusion in Justice Black's discussion.
- Philip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State (Harvard, 2002), analyzes the background that attracted Jefferson and Black to the use of the metaphor "the wall of separation of church and state."

Checking the Numbers

Adherents.com represents an excellent and extensive organized resource on the numerical strength of religious groups in the United States and around the world. The focus is on the statistical aspect of the world's religions based on currently available data on the subject.
The Gallup Organization presents numerous examples of recent survey results on U.S. religious and cultural matters and also portrays trends that can be discerned in comparing survey data over a number of years. An excerpt from Where America Stands (John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1997) explains the principles on which scientific polling work is based.
The Pew Charitable Trusts is another polling organization, which has sections on Religion in Public Life and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Public Agenda Online presents information on public opinion and policy. The site includes essays on the field of opinion research with articles on subjects such as "20 Questions Journalists Should Ask About Poll Results" and "Best Estimates: A Guide to Sample Size and Margin of Error."