Customer Reviews

The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a must-read for any person who wants to take an intellectual look at modern American religions. I happen to be a "believer" in one of the analyzed faiths (Protestantism--both mainline and evangelical, Catholicism, and Judiasm) and I found his analysis to be insightful, occasionallly disturbing, amd very thought-provoking. Although Wolfe calls himself an agnostic, of sorts, he is respectful to the people and views he analyzes and uses an even handed tone to both praise and critique the current state of religious belief in the US.

As a person interested in theology I found his discussion of modern doctrine, sin, and worship to be completely fascinating. This book does not set out to change anyone's core beliefs about God, but it very well may change your view about how the church approaches God, worship, and evangelism.

Although I am a lay reader, I have read quite a bit of theology and was comfortable with some terms that Wolfe takes a bit for granted. A person who has trouble distinguishing between the terms "evangelical" and "mainline", or thinks that a church using rock music might be called "liberal" could have difficulty with the text. Wolfe could have included a short glossary at the end of his book; this may have made this important text more accessible to lay readers.

I strongly recommend this book to any person studying religion or theology, or to any intellectually-minded believer in Christianity or Judaism.

Scholars debate the number of "Christian" sects scattered across the planet. Wolfe doesn't attempt a count for the United States. Rightly so, the situation in that country is far too dynamic to pin down securely. If his chronicle is any indication, there may be more sub-forms of "Christianity" within those borders than can be found around the entire globe. Wolfe's travels and interviews are assembled here in a lively and descriptive account of why "Christianity" in the US precludes either definition or classification. It is, in many ways a ground-breaking and interesting book. It's certainly a stimulating read. Just keeping track of the breakaways and schisms, local or regional, is a mind-bending exercise.

If the US prides itself on anything, it is the theme of "individuality". As a politically democratic heritage has demonstrated, ideals and beliefs there are too fluid for dogmas to take root effectively. In religious matters, although these are rarely studied in detail, the passion for individual decision-making is intense. Wolfe, who visited and interviewed countless ministers and adherents of various faiths, demonstrates that personal choice has both been expressed and addressed in highly varied ways. His account is as detached as possible, since value judgements on his part would be meaningless. A circumstance, he grants, that is partly due to his Jewish Hungarian background. Whatever his method was - and only one group demanded that he declare himself - it shows here as impersonal and highly effective. Given the broad sweep he had to make, gathering in Protestants of many stripes, Roman Catholics, Jews and Muslims, he's produced both a detailed and comprehensive account. By the time you've finished this book, you find that few, if any, of the interviewees duplicated the words of any other. Individualism, indeed!

Wolfe opens the book with what many still believe is fundamental to "faith" - humans are depraved and only the "believers" can count on some form of redemption. In short, people are divided into those who are "saved" and everybody else. The "state of grace" endorsed by the early Puritans, was believed to have set some people apart. Wolfe argues that this separation is no longer valid - if it ever was - and that there are too many forms of "faith" accepted by too many people to sustain the idea of separation. In order to learn this, Wolfe surveyed the "fundamentalists", "evangelicals", "mainline" and "megachurch" leaders and members to obtain their views. He sat in churches, meeting halls, homes and any place where the faithful might gather. He also dealt with those few who remain apart from "organised religions" and spoke directly to their particular deity. He deals with such questions as "fellowship", "sin", dogmas - which label(s?) "doctrine" and "morality". All these "scare quotes" are needed because, again, similarity of views is lacking. If nothing else has been shed in religion in the US, it is any form of absolutism.

Among the many changes that have transformed US religions practices, the application of market forces is looming ever larger. Tom Lehrer once sang "You really gotta sell the product" ** to church leaders seeking new members and retaining old ones. Christian church leaders have taken this advice to heart. Selling "faith" has led to adoption of a wide variety of techniques, from the "rock mass" to putting the crucifix behind the alter in storage in the church basement. On the one hand, this has had effective results. Many people have become "switchers", often more than once, jumping from one faith to another seamlessly. If a church - even the building itself - the officials, the rules or doctrines, others in the group, fail to appeal, the communicant simply goes elsewhere. Scandals within churches, raising the issues of what is "morality" and who's qualified to pronounce on it, may scatter members. On the other hand, it may bring people together to resolve an issue to their satisfaction, apart from whatever senior members of a hierarchy might decree.

Some people in the US have viewed recent ties between religion and politics with fear and distrust. Others, of course, applaud it. To those doubtful, Wolfe counsels patience and understanding. There are simply too many versions of religion in his country to ever seriously threaten the political structure of the US. Any government showing favouritism to any given sect[s] will be vigorously opposed by all the rest. Since each has its own version of what "religion" is all about, commonality of views sufficiently bound to overthrow the tradition of "separation of church and state" is doomed to failure. Since the diversity of opinion about relationship with the various deities is so great, a similar spectrum typifies views about politics. There is no foundation for categorisation in either realm. As Wolfe points out, "Christianity" has been "Americanised" making it too diffused for common ideas, beliefs or actions. That may give comfort to some, or distress to others. It is, however, the reality of the situation. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

** "Vatican Rag" - 1965

The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith by Alan Wolfe is a fascinating study of how the faith of Americans has changed and is practiced in this 21st century. It is an objective sociological study by a self-professed agnostic and non-practicing Jew. Wolfe is not hostile to religion and admits admiring those with a strong belief.

It is always a plus to come across a readable academic study. Professor Wolfe shows how faithful Americans, in the Judeo-Christian sense, have gone from a God focused practice of faith to a faith were the focus is on self and God is a tool for a kind of sentimental self-defined morality.

The writer also covers the faith experience of new immigrants to the United States and does reflect on Islam and new religions like Mormonism. He observes the struggle for orthodox Islam against "Americanization" of that faith.

What comes across in this study is that how people label themselves is not necessarily the faith they practice. This is probably not news to the keen observer of the "churched" but the book does one a service in verifying what one observes in scientific terms.

My only negative about this work is that the author overlooks those bastions of serious orthodox study and practice of Judaism, Catholic and Reformed theology. Dr. Wolfe tends to think orthodox belief will be all but gone in a few years. I disagree, and believe this is where the future of Judaism and Christianity can be found. Overall I recommend this work for any serious student of religion in America.

Doctrine isn't the most important component in religion today, tolerance is. This point is nailed home by Wolfe, who details how people today live their faiths as well as preach about them. God is a friend to many and not an authority figure.

In 2005, Christian Smith coined the term "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" to describe the beliefs of most American teenagers: exceedingly vague, it's a belief system more about providing therapeutic benefits to its adherents than matching any sort of doctrine. This wouldn't be a surprise to anyone who read (in 2003, when it was published) Alan Wolfe's "The Transformation of American Religion", which points out that this is extremely common among the religious of all ages, largely an effect of religious institutions' adaption to modern America and their almost capitalistic efforts to attract adherents.

"Transformation" covers more broad ground than doctrine, however - the book handles several aspects of religion in turn. This leads to some repetitiveness, given the shared source of many of the changes, but each aspect has its own details. I worried a bit about Wolfe hitting every nail of the changes with his individualism hammer, but he picks out the different strains on occasion and the sourcing never really strains. Still, the book can actually get more interesting when it switches to a sub-topic, like smaller groups (Mormons, Buddhists) and immigrants where the central theme has more complicated results.

Said theme being that churches - to stay alive and attract people - increasingly draw from individualism and pop culture, from the surge of some conservative denominations (such as Pentecostalism), to the weakening of doctrine and denominational differences even in more formal churches, to the very modernistic mega-churches, to a number of other issues. Wolfe leans very heavily on interviews and ethnographers, but while I would have liked more statistical grounding, there's enough here to stop it from falling apart. The only prose problem was he occasionally slips into writing from the perspective of the people he's talking about, which can be disorienting.

His approach runs into trouble in the last chapter, though, where he misapplies the non-denominationalism into politics. Evangelicals may not have that much fixed doctrine, but they can be relied on to vote a certain way. Further, he misunderstands the anti-democratic nature of the courts blocking some religious populism as a bug, when it's a feature; they're a necessary check on populist approaches. This isn't to say there's not a complicated issue over the intersection of religion and politics; just that he fails to approach it correctly.

"The Transformation of American Religion" could have used a little rebalancing of content, but is recommended for a look at the cultural background of current religion; just don't expect anything useful about the political side of things from it.

The nineteenth-century Scots divine Horatius Bonar sighed, "I looked for the world and found it in the church. I looked for the church and found it in the world." Alan Wolfe's Transformation of American Religion puts a modern, secular, and upbeat spin to Bonar's lament. In this lucidly written book--something of a collection of sociological and ethnographic examples pointed by authorial direction--Wolfe attempts to calm the fears of agnostic liberals who worry about religious oppression. Fear not, Wolfe counters, American believers of every sort have been so thoroughly compromised by North American individualism, democracy and popular culture that they are hardly a threat to anyone, let alone worth the trouble of setting undemocratic courts on. And if religious folks are still too counter-cultural for one's secular taste, Wolfe counsels patience; in future decades they will probably be even less so. (It's certainly symbolic of current degree of American secularization that no one involved in the production of the book noticed the typographical error in Wolfe's reference to John 3: 16.) (205)

Wolfe is often a shrewd commentator about contemporary American religion. Evangelicals may wince at Wolfe's beamish declarations that their religious practices have been "transformed by the very popular entertainment they were seeking to emulate." (211). Many fundamentalists may likewise nod in rueful agreement with Wolfe that although they may be "doctrinaire...interested in doctrine they are not." (69) My only caveat is that Wolfe's observations about Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism--about which I have no personal knowledge--seem spot on, whereas I frequently thought of exceptions to his comments about evangelicalism, fundamentalism, and Mormonism--about which I am well acquainted.

As the reviewer from Jackhorn, KY stated, this book lacks original research. If you read the section on the "house church movement" and then go to the website for The Homechurch Homepage, you will see that Mr. Wolfe hacked away at many of the articles on the site to obtain his "research." For the many quotes he used from the website, not once were any of the authors contacted by Mr. Wolfe in order to do any original research. If he had done so, he would have come away with a different take than he wrote in his book.