© Columbia University Press
Religion in America Since 1945: A History
Paper, 384 pages, 20 illus.
ISBN: 978-0-231-12155-2
$28.00
/ £19.50
December, 2003
Cloth, 384 pages, 20 illus.
ISBN: 978-0-231-12154-5
$75.00
/ £52.00
"Allitt presents the main events, trends, and movements within the religious world as well as the connection between religion and the major issues in national life at the time . . . As a general survey, this one is accurate and readable enough to interest informed readers at many levels." — Library Journal
"Allitt has written a very good book about religion in America over the past half century . . . Allitt reminds his readers just how extraordinary our shared experience has been, and how distressful our diversity." — America Magazine
"Patrick Allitt of Emory University has written a very impressive book,Religion in America Since 1945: A History. What has been said about America must also be said about religion in America: it is so vast and various that almost anything said about it is amply supported by the evidence. Unlike too many historians, Allitt understands that the subject of America and the subject of religion in America are not two subjects but one." — First Things
"speaks with authority and verve...thoughful and nuanced...essential reading for all concerned with American religion" — James Carroll, American Catholic Studies
"Allitt's book is a splendidly accessible narrative...His historical narrative is remarkably comprehensive, urbane and fair-minded." — David Hempton, Times Literary Supplement
"A lucid, compelling narrative of recent U.S. religious history...Scholars, teachers and students of religion in contemporary America are the fortunate beneficiaries of his noteworthy achievement." — William Vance Trollinger, Journal of Church and State
"This volume, manageable in size and engagingly written, is accessible to the general as well as the specialist reader and will surely find extensive textbook use." — Debra Higgs Strickland, Journal of Religion
"Allitt has written a lucid and accessible survey. Allitt also deserves kudos for devoting considerable space not only to popular religious culture but also to theological developments." — Eugene McCarraher, Journal of American HistoryVillanova University
"Allitt's work is impressive, providing a learned and engaging narrative of a critical epoch in American religious history." — Religious Studies Review
"An engaging and easy-to-read text." — Howell Williams, H-Net Reviews
"A work of masterful and exacting scholarship that reads like a page-turner. Tracing the varities of religious experience in the United States from the dropping of the atom bomb in 1945 to '9/11,' Allitt offers a thoughtful and provocative account of all manner of American belief and religious space-from Billy Graham to Timothy O'Leary, from Eero Saarinen's M.I.T. chapel to Levittown's ticky-tacky suburban "church gymnasiums," from Paul Tillich to Louis Farrakan. Allitt's narrative brilliantly explores how and why the U.S. is both the most religious and the most secular of the industrialized nations in the world. This is a scholarly work of the first order that is a rollicking good read!" — Mark S. Massa, S.J., co-director of the Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University and author of Catholics and American Culture: Fulton Sheen, Dorothy Day, and the Notre Dame Football Team
"Allitt has provided us with a shrewd , savvy introduction to a subject of bewildering complexity. And the writing is terrific." — John T. McGreevy, author of Catholicism and American Freedom: A History and John A. O'Brien Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame
"No single book can render the whole landscape of modern American religion. But Patrick Allitt has given us an exceptionally lucid overview in this humane, witty, and gracefully written volume. Approaching religion in the genial spirit of a William James, Allitt seeks less to pass judgment on his subjects than to describe them fairly, and explore their place in the texture of modern American life. The resulting book not only serves as a stimulating introduction to an essential but poorly understood aspect of recent American history. It also kindles our curiosity and wonder at the inexhaustible variety of human thought and experience." — Wilfred M. McClay, holder of the SunTrust Chair of Humanities, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America
"Patrick Allitt has done an enviable job of piecing together a coherent picture of the complex developments that have characterized American religion since World War II. I am especially impressed with his judicious selection of topics. The book is even-handed in its coverage of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, and is particularly helpful in showing how religious leaders responded to major political events, cultural change, and new technology. Sociologists and political scientists, as well as historians and scholars of religion, will find a lot of valuable information in this book." — Robert Wuthnow, director of the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University and author of The Restructuring of American Religion