History of American Religion, 1865 to Present

Allitt‘s book is a fast paced summary of the religious landscape in America after 1945. As such it presents a composite, complex picture of the post war pluralistic American society where the religiosity of the political life clashes with the concept of the church-state separation, where the highly religious lives alongside with the secular and where tolerance for others is an important civic requirement and a sign of the health of American polity. And yet all this does not preclude public and political conflicts, contradictory discourses on morality, the formation of strange ideological alliances and a maddening mix of politics, science and philosophy covering war, peace, environment, procreation, without forgetting the influence of the all too powerful money and the preponderance of false prophets.       Allitt  has, through his narrative, provided a crisp picture of this contemporary religious landscape where national and international political considerations and social themes are intertwined and interlinked. Allitt relies on other historians’ works of theology, religious sociology, religious journalism as well as oral history to explain the four paradoxes of his story and the overall picture of America’s modern religious experiences. Allitt presents these experiences he calls his four paradoxes in his narrative in a chronological order that starts with the end of the Second World War.  The first chapter titled Anxious Victory presents a quick and broad overview as to how each American religious denominations reacted to the end of WWII and how they positioned themselves vis-à-vis the political, moral, and social issues prevalent at the times (religious revivalism; the atomic bomb, the threat of communism, the cold war, racial segregation, civil rights movement, the Korean war and the Vietnam conflict). The chapters that follow deal with each of these issues as they impacted on the religious life of the nation in subsequent decades in the mode of popular history, easily understandable and not requiring any sophisticated knowledge of the events under discussion. As such the narrative is a synthesis of events, influences and conflicts demarcated by time and topic but not constrained by any understanding of geography or ideology as the author scans the topic in its multidimensional form, linking the interpretation of national issues with the repercussion of international events they react to (Vatican II, Israeli-Arab conflict, Islamic extremism and AIDS). From that perspective this is one of the rare books I have read in this semester that gives me the opportunity to see the full picture of the religious scene and experience in America, not as a series of isolated developments, but rather as a network of interconnected forces that portray the character, vitality, religiosity and laicism of the ever changing American psyche in a modern world of globalized realities and sensitivities. And the most important thing that I have come to value and cherish from this overall perspective is the fact that the “ American taste for verbal combat continues to be tempered by a strong American faith in civility” (page 264) and may I add in mutual respect.  This civility and mutual respect are the humanistic bases the  of the American polity and Allitt has very effectively painted and portrayed it to the general reader.I loved the book and would recommend that the future courses of the History of the American Religion maintain it on their list of recommended readings. While Allitt’s  ”Religion in America” does not reach the broad perspectives of  the “Religious History of The American People” by Sydney Ahlstrom ( published in 1972) , the reader is happy to know that Allitt’s narrative  is there to fill the gap beyond the 1970s.  

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