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How American culture influences worship
The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith; Alan Wolfe;Free Press: 310 pp., $26

By Bernadette Murphy, Special to The Times

Religion pervades American culture. "In God We Trust" is emblazoned on our money; "One nation, under God," we recite in the Pledge of Allegiance. In our history, religion played a role from the beginning. The United States was the first country in the world to write freedom of religion into its constitution, notes Alan Wolfe, sociologist and author of "The Transformation of American Religion," and whether we like it or not, we are considered one of the most religious nations in the West.

But if we examine how Americans practice their faith in daily life, Wolfe contends, we'll find not the fire-and-brimstone belief systems in which doctrine and theology informed our lives but domesticated, malleable faiths, more attuned to the surrounding secular culture than were the original tenets of our respective denominations. "[F]ar from living in a world elsewhere, the faithful in the United States are remarkably like everyone else," Wolfe writes in this sharp-eyed examination of how religion is practiced in American daily life....

...The lamenting tone in which Wolfe describes these changes may initially be misleading. There are drawbacks to these transformations, he points out; we have lost our religious zest and abandoned the high standards of those who preceded us. Yet his narrative makes clear that in many ways this is to the good. Over the last 40 years, for example, Americans have become adept at switching faiths. "As much as we may be tempted to denounce as flighty Americans who change their faith as often as their cars," he writes, "we ought to recognize that religious switching acts as a kind of insurance policy against bigotry. If you cannot be sure today what your faith will be tomorrow you had better not say anything too nasty about any of them."

Wolfe, who holds no specific religious convictions himself, shows readers — both believers and those who fear religion's power and its potential for fanaticism — the upside of this transformation, citing in particular our culture's extraordinary ability to embrace religious pluralism. Offering neither a cynical attack on religion nor a starry-eyed celebration of its triumphs, he presents a commendably balanced view, honoring the role of religion has played in our nation's past while helping us see more clearly the present state of religious affairs. The resulting portrait may run contrary to our national self-image, but it also lessens the gap between the high expectations many of us have for religion and the realities of ordinary people leading earthly lives.