I agree with Allitt’s argument that between WWII to 9/11 WTC attacks, American religion has become more diverse, politicized, and complex. Any knucklehead knows that American religion is diverse, and has become more diverse since WWII.
It seems to me that this book is more about Catholics since WWII than any other religious groups. Patrick Allitt has ignored many Protestant groups as there is no significant attention to Methodists, Presbyterians, many Baptists, and Pentecostals. I think Allitt has a major bias against Protestantism. I paid particular attention to how Allitt discussed Islam or other religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, (for my own personal biased reasons). I think he probably gave more attention to these various groups as compared to Protestant groups. I understand that this is a survey, and it is hard to fit in every nitty gritty detail within 200 pages, but still, Allitt has done a poor job in my personal opinion. Why is there extensive coverage on Catholicism and not on other groups?
If this study was undertaken I would spend 1000 pages or more so all various religious groups between WWII and 9/11 could be fairly represented.
I paid particular attention to Allitt’s discussion of Islam in America. It is lacking some major issues. He only discusses Black Muslims in relation to Islam, and Islam again resurfaces in the 1990s during Gulf War I. What about millions of immigrant Muslims who had started to come to America in the 1960s? He uses secondary sources, and many flawed data historical works to come up with his analysis of Muslims in America. So I really wonder how useful this study is.
There has to be a better survey of contemporary American religion out there. If not someone really needs to compile one, because this is not it. I’ll reserve further comments for class discussion.