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'Transformation' a thoughtful analysis of US culture's impact on religion

By Rich Barlow, Globe Correspondent, 10/1/2003

The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith, By Alan Wolfe, Free Press, 304 pp., $26
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American culture is the world's teenager, vibrantly exuberant if often crass. It has remade all in its path, homogenizing everything from the food we eat to the TV we watch to foreigners' clothing and movie tastes. No wonder God never had a chance against this juggernaut.

"In the United States, culture has transformed Christ, as well as all other religions found within these shores," Boston College professor Alan Wolfe writes in "The Transformation of American Religion," his intriguingly reported survey of our religious beliefs and practices. This most modern of nations has reshaped the most ancient of faiths, from Judaism to Buddhism, says Wolfe; a country of multiple ethnicities, multiple opinions, multiple get-rich-quick schemes, multiple marriages, and, for numerous converts, multiple religions sees God as a celestial Stuart Smalley, a benign figure reassuring believers that they're good enough, they're smart enough, and doggone it, people like them....