Allitt seems to have intended his book as a broad, though not comprehensive, survey for academics and interested bystanders alike. He admits in the introduction that he chose to develop certain themes at the expense of others, while he hopes that those who are annoyed with the exclusion of other subjects or intrigued with his general overview might turn to the numerous other works on American religion (p. xiii). His general objective seems to be a demonstration of the ways in which American religion has grown less denominational and more politicized, but, again, there are other books on the same subject, particularly those from which he drew that idea. There were a handful of unduly personal or folksy-sounding comments in Religion in America that I found annoying, such as “Have you ever read a book in total rapture, convinced that every word is true and that the author is showing you how to live your life? That’s what The Seven Storey Mountain is like.” (p. 19), or “Even people who should have known better found themselves powerless to switch channels when the magnetic couple [the Bakkers] was on the air” (p. 192). These and similar comments began to sound a bit History-channel-ish after a while, though I’m sure Allitt was merely trying to engage the reader. (At least he didn’t have any stock photos to pan slowly over!)
The subjects addressed by the book also varied between intellectual and popular. While Allitt discussed religious conferences and political debates, he also included less mainline material such as the growing interest in UFO’s, which spawned a wave of groups that adhered to sci-fi-like doctrines. One thing he did succeed in demonstrating is the increasing rift between academic specialists in theology and philosophy, and the general body of American believers, a theme he reiterates in his conclusion (p. 264). As he said, while in mid-twentieth-century America it was possible to have figures such as Reinhold Niebuhr and John Courtney Murray, whose doctrinally-infused ideas were examined by a wide range of people, now books on religion tend to be written in “the idiom of self-help”. This split is very worrying to me, insofar as it might lead to an increasing academic divorce from popular thoughts and desires, and an increasing simplification and commercialization of the ideas that are offered in popular “spiritual” literature. Of course, this is also a reflection of the strategy of many religions to offer emotional, rather than intellectual, satisfaction. It’s not that the general public is hopelessly ignorant, it’s that most people feel that they can safely delegate serious theological consideration to intellectuals, having ceased to see the relevance of such fine distinctions in their personal lives.