Hearing Robert Putnam on the puzzle of American religion

Travis Scholl STLtoday.com | Posted: Thursday, November 3, 2011 2:30 pm

Last night, I heard Robert Putnam, America's foremost social scientist, speak at Washington University on his latest research into American religion. His recent book, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, is quickly becoming a definitive study on the subject. And his insights burst almost all the preconceived notions of what it means to be religious in America.

At the heart of Putnam's investigation (and his lecture) is what he calls the "puzzle" of American religion: How can America be simultaneously religiously devout, religiously diverse, and religiously tolerant, when history says these three social ingredients don't mix?

Coming out of the most religiously observant decade of American history, the 1950s, Putnam observed that we witnessed two seismic shocks in American public life. First, the social and political upheaval of the 1960s, during which time religious observance plummeted. Second, the social counterreaction to the 1960s that eventually coalesced in the Religious Right of the 1980s. (Although Putnam was adamant to note that this counterreaction began as a social and moral movement and not a political one.)

One of the striking realities to come out of this convulsive upheaval is that where previously religious identification did not correlate with political identification (in the 50s, you could find just as many Republicans as Democrats sitting next to you in the pew on Sunday morning), now people will change their religion to fit their politics, and not vice versa. Given the "stakes" of both religious and political belief, this is remarkably counterintuitive.

http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/civil-religion/travis-scholl/article_e320b154-0649-11e1-a551-001a4bcf6878.html