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jmrprice's review
3.0
Lots of i formation to digest - some expected themes and a few surprises for sure.
Religiosity and partisanship provide some interesting parallels.
Religiosity and partisanship provide some interesting parallels.
pilateschick's review
5.0
Probably best as a reference tool. I was overwhelmed, so I started at the top of the index and worked my way through, stopping to read topics that interested me. These two men were meticulous, meticulous, meticulous!
bittersweet_symphony's review
3.0
Demographics. Trends. Data.
I had hoped this book would provide more historical or sociological commentary. Instead, American Grace is an elaboration on a long study conducted by Putnam and Campbell. The majority of the book gives context to the data they found, explores the trends, and shows lots of demographic charts, which makes it a great resource, and less of an engaging read.
The volume contains several vignettes highlighting various faith communities, give color and detail to the worship services and lifestyles of their members. I wish the book have been much more of this and less about "the survey."
It's a long haul to get through this book. I would have preferred if the used the study to buttress their commentary and arguments rather than use it as the focal point. Honestly, they spent little time talking about how religion divides and unites us. I got half-way through the book and completely forgot that tension was the exact reason why I wanted to read it. Instead, we get demographics, data, and trends. Where's the human element! I wanted to hear how individuals experience religion and how those subjective experiences divide or unite them with others.
American Grace is a sturdy book and should hold up well in academic circles, but I was definitely disappointed.
I had hoped this book would provide more historical or sociological commentary. Instead, American Grace is an elaboration on a long study conducted by Putnam and Campbell. The majority of the book gives context to the data they found, explores the trends, and shows lots of demographic charts, which makes it a great resource, and less of an engaging read.
The volume contains several vignettes highlighting various faith communities, give color and detail to the worship services and lifestyles of their members. I wish the book have been much more of this and less about "the survey."
It's a long haul to get through this book. I would have preferred if the used the study to buttress their commentary and arguments rather than use it as the focal point. Honestly, they spent little time talking about how religion divides and unites us. I got half-way through the book and completely forgot that tension was the exact reason why I wanted to read it. Instead, we get demographics, data, and trends. Where's the human element! I wanted to hear how individuals experience religion and how those subjective experiences divide or unite them with others.
American Grace is a sturdy book and should hold up well in academic circles, but I was definitely disappointed.
shirleytupperfreeman's review against another edition
This one took a couple months to finish - it's not a page turner, but I'm very glad to have read it. If you liked Robert Putnam's earlier book about social capital, Bowling Alone, you'll find this one of interest. Using huge data sets and in-depth statistical analysis, Putnam and Campbell describe the state of religion in America over the past 5-6 decades. The statistical chapters are interspersed with 'vignettes' - case studies of a dozen real congregations in the United States. The authors conclude that the coexistence of religious devotion and religious diversity in America is generated by the strong web of interlocking personal relationships among people of many different faiths - hence the title 'America's Grace.'
mkka's review
Thorough and extrodinarily balanced book that deals with the extremely important topic of religion in America.
drbobcornwall's review against another edition
5.0
This is a beautifully written and compelling examination of the role religion plays in society. If you're clergy you must read this. If you're a leader in a faith community you'll want to read this book.
It tells why we seem religious, are religious, and maybe not so religious all at the same time. Things are complex, and their look at the data help us make heads and tails of it all!
My top book of 2010.
It tells why we seem religious, are religious, and maybe not so religious all at the same time. Things are complex, and their look at the data help us make heads and tails of it all!
My top book of 2010.
tasmanian_bibliophile's review
4.0
‘America manages to be both religiously diverse and religiously devout because it’s difficult to damn those you know and love.’
This book, by Professors Robert D Putnam and David E Campbell, presents a comprehensive study of religious beliefs and practices in the USA, and provides a detailed overview of an important aspect of American culture. Data was collected as part of a two-step interview survey (Faith Matters 2006, 2007)) which involved more than 3000 respondents across the USA. The series of findings presented make for interesting reading. Consider:
• Between one third to one half of all marriages are interfaith;
• Young people are more opposed to abortion than their parents, but more accepting of same- sex marriage;
• Jews are the most broadly popular religious group in the USA today;
• Roughly one third of Americans have switched religions at some stage.
The findings affirm the importance of organized religion: more than 83% of Americans report that they belong to a specific religion; 59% report that they pray at least once a week and 40% report attendance at weekly services. At the same time, the traditional role of religion has been challenged by ‘the sexually libertine 1960s’ which subsequently resulted in ‘a prudish aftershock of growth in conservative religion, especially evangelicalism, and an even more pronounced cultural presence for evangelicals, most noticeably in the political arena.’ Professors Putnam and Campbell assert that this evangelical revival, which began to recede by the early 1990s was sparked more by deeply personal moral concerns than by hot-button political issues: ‘Abortion and same-sex marriage are the glue holding the coalition of the religious together.’
‘How has America solved the puzzle of religious pluralism – the coexistence of religious diversity and devotion? And how has it done so in the wake of growing religious polarization? By creating a web of interlocking personal relationships among people of many different faiths. This is America’s grace.’
In part, this is due to the nature of American society. The combination of an absence of a religious monopoly and an atmosphere of religious liberty has supported the development of religious pluralism. ‘Religions compete, adapt and evolve as individual Americans freely move from one congregation to another, and even from one religion to another.’
It is true that America’s tradition of peaceful religious coexistence is largely about relative harmony between different Christian denominations. But harmony between Catholics and Protestants is comparatively recent, and the process of how this change came about raises an important question: How do mutual fear, suspicion and intolerance make way for tolerance and trust? What lessons can be drawn from the past?
This is a fascinating study which is highly readable and provides much food for thought.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
This book, by Professors Robert D Putnam and David E Campbell, presents a comprehensive study of religious beliefs and practices in the USA, and provides a detailed overview of an important aspect of American culture. Data was collected as part of a two-step interview survey (Faith Matters 2006, 2007)) which involved more than 3000 respondents across the USA. The series of findings presented make for interesting reading. Consider:
• Between one third to one half of all marriages are interfaith;
• Young people are more opposed to abortion than their parents, but more accepting of same- sex marriage;
• Jews are the most broadly popular religious group in the USA today;
• Roughly one third of Americans have switched religions at some stage.
The findings affirm the importance of organized religion: more than 83% of Americans report that they belong to a specific religion; 59% report that they pray at least once a week and 40% report attendance at weekly services. At the same time, the traditional role of religion has been challenged by ‘the sexually libertine 1960s’ which subsequently resulted in ‘a prudish aftershock of growth in conservative religion, especially evangelicalism, and an even more pronounced cultural presence for evangelicals, most noticeably in the political arena.’ Professors Putnam and Campbell assert that this evangelical revival, which began to recede by the early 1990s was sparked more by deeply personal moral concerns than by hot-button political issues: ‘Abortion and same-sex marriage are the glue holding the coalition of the religious together.’
‘How has America solved the puzzle of religious pluralism – the coexistence of religious diversity and devotion? And how has it done so in the wake of growing religious polarization? By creating a web of interlocking personal relationships among people of many different faiths. This is America’s grace.’
In part, this is due to the nature of American society. The combination of an absence of a religious monopoly and an atmosphere of religious liberty has supported the development of religious pluralism. ‘Religions compete, adapt and evolve as individual Americans freely move from one congregation to another, and even from one religion to another.’
It is true that America’s tradition of peaceful religious coexistence is largely about relative harmony between different Christian denominations. But harmony between Catholics and Protestants is comparatively recent, and the process of how this change came about raises an important question: How do mutual fear, suspicion and intolerance make way for tolerance and trust? What lessons can be drawn from the past?
This is a fascinating study which is highly readable and provides much food for thought.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
emiged's review against another edition
3.0
Finally! I'm done!! After renewing the book five times (with two separate checkouts) I have finally read the last page!
It's a bit on the long side. But in its favor, the print is not miniscule and there are plenty of graphs and charts (some a bit more obtuse than others) that take up considerable space, too.
American Grace provides some fascinating insights into religious life in the United States over the past seventy or so years. Putnam and Campbell trace the "shock and two aftershocks" that prompted major shifts in spirituality, religious identification, religious activity, even stretching into politics and social life. No surprise, the first major shock was "the sexually libertine 1960s," which was followed by "a prudish aftershock of growth in conservative religion." Finally, another opposing reaction occurred: "a growing number of...young people have come to disavow religion" in response to the greater association between religion and conservative politics. Within that general framework, the authors discovered a remarkable fluidity to American religious life.
Putnam and Campbell cover almost every imaginable angle of the data they have gathered: gender, ethnicity, politics, class, income, level of religious activity, trends within religions and between religious traditions, friendships and relationships with neighbors, measures of tolerance and inter-faith conversion. Interspersed between chapters cram packed with data and statistics are vignettes describing worship services for different faiths.
The sections on the interplay between religion and politics yielded some very interesting results as the authors clearly state "God in American history has not been a consistent partisan of left or right." They point out religion's influence on both ends of the political spectrum and provide some plausible explanations for why the political right seems to have such claim over religion in the public sphere today.
Being LDS, I was most intrigued by what the authors (one of whom is also LDS) concluded about Mormons. Some highlights:
* "Even among the most heavily Republican religious group in the country [i.e., Mormons] there is still some degree of political diversity, as 20 percent of highly religious Mormons identify as Democrats." [Another 10% claim political independence from either party - so as much as one-third of "highly religious" or "active" Mormons are not politically conservative!]
* "Mormon women are overwhelmingly opposed to women as (lay) priests, but Mormon men have more mixed views: 90 percent of Mormon women as compared to 52 percent of Mormon men. In short, Mormons, especially Mormon women, appear to be the only substantial holdouts against the growing and substantial consensus across the religious spectrum in favor of women playing a fuller role in church leadership."
* Regarding the results of a survey asking members of certain faiths their impression or "warmth level" toward those of other faiths: "Mormons like everyone else, while almost everyone else dislikes Mormons. Jews are the exception, as they give Mormons [the only!] net positive rating."
* One more note for my LDS friends: Elder Quentin L. Cook quoted some of this book's findings in his most recent General Conference address!
Some other reviewers have commented that Putnam and Campbell focus almost exclusively on Christian faiths. While I would have liked more info on Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in America, the authors had to work with the data they had, and that shows that all of those "other faiths" together comprise a total of only about 3% of the population. They mention this in their introduction, explaining the limitations of their data: "Since the Faith Matters survey was administered to a randomly selected representative sample of the United States, it contains the correct proportion of each group. But the absolute number of these other faiths is too small to permit reliable analysis. We are thus limited in what we can report about these disparate faiths."
In short, American Grace demonstrates solid scholarship, interesting insights, and lots and lots of statistics.
For more book reviews, come visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.
It's a bit on the long side. But in its favor, the print is not miniscule and there are plenty of graphs and charts (some a bit more obtuse than others) that take up considerable space, too.
American Grace provides some fascinating insights into religious life in the United States over the past seventy or so years. Putnam and Campbell trace the "shock and two aftershocks" that prompted major shifts in spirituality, religious identification, religious activity, even stretching into politics and social life. No surprise, the first major shock was "the sexually libertine 1960s," which was followed by "a prudish aftershock of growth in conservative religion." Finally, another opposing reaction occurred: "a growing number of...young people have come to disavow religion" in response to the greater association between religion and conservative politics. Within that general framework, the authors discovered a remarkable fluidity to American religious life.
Putnam and Campbell cover almost every imaginable angle of the data they have gathered: gender, ethnicity, politics, class, income, level of religious activity, trends within religions and between religious traditions, friendships and relationships with neighbors, measures of tolerance and inter-faith conversion. Interspersed between chapters cram packed with data and statistics are vignettes describing worship services for different faiths.
The sections on the interplay between religion and politics yielded some very interesting results as the authors clearly state "God in American history has not been a consistent partisan of left or right." They point out religion's influence on both ends of the political spectrum and provide some plausible explanations for why the political right seems to have such claim over religion in the public sphere today.
Being LDS, I was most intrigued by what the authors (one of whom is also LDS) concluded about Mormons. Some highlights:
* "Even among the most heavily Republican religious group in the country [i.e., Mormons] there is still some degree of political diversity, as 20 percent of highly religious Mormons identify as Democrats." [Another 10% claim political independence from either party - so as much as one-third of "highly religious" or "active" Mormons are not politically conservative!]
* "Mormon women are overwhelmingly opposed to women as (lay) priests, but Mormon men have more mixed views: 90 percent of Mormon women as compared to 52 percent of Mormon men. In short, Mormons, especially Mormon women, appear to be the only substantial holdouts against the growing and substantial consensus across the religious spectrum in favor of women playing a fuller role in church leadership."
* Regarding the results of a survey asking members of certain faiths their impression or "warmth level" toward those of other faiths: "Mormons like everyone else, while almost everyone else dislikes Mormons. Jews are the exception, as they give Mormons [the only!] net positive rating."
* One more note for my LDS friends: Elder Quentin L. Cook quoted some of this book's findings in his most recent General Conference address!
Some other reviewers have commented that Putnam and Campbell focus almost exclusively on Christian faiths. While I would have liked more info on Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in America, the authors had to work with the data they had, and that shows that all of those "other faiths" together comprise a total of only about 3% of the population. They mention this in their introduction, explaining the limitations of their data: "Since the Faith Matters survey was administered to a randomly selected representative sample of the United States, it contains the correct proportion of each group. But the absolute number of these other faiths is too small to permit reliable analysis. We are thus limited in what we can report about these disparate faiths."
In short, American Grace demonstrates solid scholarship, interesting insights, and lots and lots of statistics.
For more book reviews, come visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.
tanyarobinson's review against another edition
3.0
I requested American Grace from the library because it was repeatedly footnoted in Elder Quentin Cook's talk from the April 2011 LDS General Conference, and I wanted to know more about what it said. This lengthy tome discusses the findings of the authors' 2006 and 2007 "Faith Matters" survey, a massive study of religious, political, and civic attitudes and behaviors of Americans across the faith spectrum. Interspersed with the statistical analysis (and plenty of charts and graphs) were vignettes from random congregations across the country, which saved the book from being too dry. Overall I found the information fascinating, but often way too drawn out.
Since the great majority of my Goodreads friends are Mormon, I thought I'd point out some of the interesting things the authors found about our religion and its place in America.
- We represent roughly 2% of the U.S. population
- Mormons are the most religiously observant group in America, followed by Black Protestants and Evangelical Protestants
- On the question "Of all respondents whose parents were in a given religious tradition, what proportion have left that faith or rarely attend services?" the LDS response was just under 45%. That sounds like a lot to me, but it was the lowest response of all the denominations.
- On the question "How important is it that your children marry someone of your own faith? the Mormons had the highest positive response, with about 66% saying it was somewhat or very important.
- Mormons gave the lowest response when asked if they favored allowing female clergy. 30% said yes, while the highest response came from Mainline Protestants (93% in favor).
- The three least popular religious groups in America are 1)Buddhists, 2)Muslims, and 3)Mormons
- Mormons report warm feelings toward all other religious groups, or as the author says, "Mormons like everyone else, while almost everyone else dislikes Mormons." The one exception to that are Jews.
- Responses to "People not of my faith, including non-Christians, can go to heaven" range from Mormons (98% agree) to Evangelical Protestants (54% agree). Protestant clergy are unhappy at this response, as their doctrine teaches only Christians can go to heaven, and their congregants evidently disagree.
- Questions about politics over the pulpit found that "Mormons and evangelicals have the least politicking and the most Republicans." "Jews and Black Protestants have the most politicking and the fewest Republicans."
- When looking at generosity across different religious traditions they found that overall it mattered more how religious you were than what religion you were apart of, yet they still commented, "Mormons are strikingly more active in giving and volunteering of all sorts."
- One of the vignettes focused on the Pioneer Ward in the Sandy West Stake. It is overall very positive (helped, I'm sure, by the fact that one of the book's authors, a professor of political science at Notre Dame, is a convert to Mormonism). It talks a lot about peoples' service in callings, the attitude of "giving their lives over to God," the fact that ward members also give above average secular community service, and shows Mormon families in a warm fuzzy light. The biggest criticism is that members put pressure on each other to hold Republican views, and that "there's always been kind of this unsaid belief that you can't be a Democrat and a good Mormon."
This is a just a glimpse in what you can find in the 570 pages before the footnotes begin. If this is even marginally appealing to you, you can get a lot out of just looking at all the charts and graphs without going through all the text. Getting through the whole book was a lot of work, but I'm glad I read it.
Since the great majority of my Goodreads friends are Mormon, I thought I'd point out some of the interesting things the authors found about our religion and its place in America.
- We represent roughly 2% of the U.S. population
- Mormons are the most religiously observant group in America, followed by Black Protestants and Evangelical Protestants
- On the question "Of all respondents whose parents were in a given religious tradition, what proportion have left that faith or rarely attend services?" the LDS response was just under 45%. That sounds like a lot to me, but it was the lowest response of all the denominations.
- On the question "How important is it that your children marry someone of your own faith? the Mormons had the highest positive response, with about 66% saying it was somewhat or very important.
- Mormons gave the lowest response when asked if they favored allowing female clergy. 30% said yes, while the highest response came from Mainline Protestants (93% in favor).
- The three least popular religious groups in America are 1)Buddhists, 2)Muslims, and 3)Mormons
- Mormons report warm feelings toward all other religious groups, or as the author says, "Mormons like everyone else, while almost everyone else dislikes Mormons." The one exception to that are Jews.
- Responses to "People not of my faith, including non-Christians, can go to heaven" range from Mormons (98% agree) to Evangelical Protestants (54% agree). Protestant clergy are unhappy at this response, as their doctrine teaches only Christians can go to heaven, and their congregants evidently disagree.
- Questions about politics over the pulpit found that "Mormons and evangelicals have the least politicking and the most Republicans." "Jews and Black Protestants have the most politicking and the fewest Republicans."
- When looking at generosity across different religious traditions they found that overall it mattered more how religious you were than what religion you were apart of, yet they still commented, "Mormons are strikingly more active in giving and volunteering of all sorts."
- One of the vignettes focused on the Pioneer Ward in the Sandy West Stake. It is overall very positive (helped, I'm sure, by the fact that one of the book's authors, a professor of political science at Notre Dame, is a convert to Mormonism). It talks a lot about peoples' service in callings, the attitude of "giving their lives over to God," the fact that ward members also give above average secular community service, and shows Mormon families in a warm fuzzy light. The biggest criticism is that members put pressure on each other to hold Republican views, and that "there's always been kind of this unsaid belief that you can't be a Democrat and a good Mormon."
This is a just a glimpse in what you can find in the 570 pages before the footnotes begin. If this is even marginally appealing to you, you can get a lot out of just looking at all the charts and graphs without going through all the text. Getting through the whole book was a lot of work, but I'm glad I read it.