Wolfe, a self-proclaimed atheist, presents the leading religions in America and analyzes them from research data. I enjoyed the data presented. However, the analysis is limited due to no atheist will ever be able to speak first hand about their relationship with any god, let alone El Elyon. The last chapter is where the author falls apart, particularly on page 257, where he throws objectivity out the door and explains his position on morality. This is still a book worth reading, as it shows the state of the religion in America. I recommend reading the Holy Bible first, so you know who the real God is, and be able to understand all of the other minor gods spoken of by Wolfe in his book. ( )

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. ( )

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