WHY RELIGION IS GOOD FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

How the diversity of religion in America has furthered democratic ideals throughout the past century.

Wuthnow, former director of the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton, offers a detailed look at religion’s role in American democracy, particularly from the New Deal era onward. The author asserts that, despite many challenges, the varied contours of the American religious landscape have been beneficial overall to democracy. He structures his argument around a handful of wide-ranging historical issues and corresponding movements. First is the New Deal and the long-running Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. Wuthnow explores the level of resistance many religious leaders and communities raised against Roosevelt’s social policy, balanced by the support of urban faith leaders who influenced policy and politics in significant ways. Wuthnow then examines issues of conscience, with a focus on World War II–era pacifism, expressed by a vocal minority of American faith communities and leadership. Then he moves on to freedom of assembly, describing how the conformist religious and social organizations of the 1950s set the groundwork for the organized activism of the following decade. Finally, the author explores human dignity, welfare, and wealth distribution, demonstrating the politicization of religious communities in recent decades and the widening rift between right and left. Wuthnow praises the role of diversity in allowing voices of dissent to find outlets amid transformative social and cultural issues. He warns, however, that “while diversity is present, it is overshadowed by polarization,” which “hasn’t been healthy either for religion or democracy.” The text is dense with evident scholarship and plenty of historical examples, but Wuthnow’s thesis is strained. In declaring diversity in religion good for democracy, the author seems mainly to argue that dissent in religion is good for democracy. The book is largely a history of dissent, and Wuthnow champions those religious traditions that spurn convention and the status quo.

A learned academic study whose appeal will be limited to fellow scholars.