We are grateful for the thoughtful reviews of American Grace. It is humbling to have our work read so closely by scholars whose work we admire, especially since our book is meant to occupy the ever-shrinking niche of rigorous social science that is nevertheless comprehensible, maybe even interesting, to lay readers. American Grace thus has the dual audience of our fellow social scientists and our own mothers-in-law (that is, people without an academic background). As Kenneth Wald notes, there inevitably is tension — and trade-offs — in meeting the expectations of both audiences. We hope American Grace demonstrates that it is possible to reconcile the tension between rigor and relevance and, perhaps, serve as a model for more such work. Religion is an especially important topic for what we might call “accessible social science,” since the subject often results in the potentially toxic combination of high public interest and polemical punditry.

Given the generosity of their comments on American Grace, it would be ungracious indeed to quibble with the reviewers' quibbles. Nonetheless, there are a few issues that we should address to ensure that our argument and evidence are not misunderstood. For example, we agree with Stratos Patrikios that “tensions between religious traditions are not absent in twenty-first century America,” particularly in politics. While the dominant trend over the last generation has been a blurring of denominational boundaries to form a “coalition of the religious” among voters, there still are some religious traditions that stand outside of that coalition. In running for the presidency and Congress, respectively, Mitt Romney, a Mormon, and Keith Ellison, a Muslim, both can attest to the limits of that coalition, as each has found that their religion can be a political obstacle. However, as is so often the case with religion in America, the glass can be seen as half-empty or half-full. After all, Ellison does serve in Congress and Romney did serve as governor of Massachusetts and remains a viable presidential candidate.

Among the reviewers, the one with the sharpest difference in perspective from ours is Penny Edgell. We have high regard for her work and thus take seriously her critique that we are too quick to portray America as a religiously tolerant nation. In spite of our difference in perspectives, though, we share more common ground with Professor Edgell than she seems to acknowledge. She writes that we “underplay the importance of the alliance of the Religious Right and the Republican Party in ‘bundling’ certain issues together in public discourse and policy.” This would seem to be a matter of interpretation, as we describe in some detail the way the Republican Party bundles sex and family issues — specifically, abortion and gay marriage — together. We even include a direct mail flyer used by the Ohio Republican Party in 2004 that describes the party as “the only party that defends life and the unborn from partial birth abortion” and “the only party you can trust to defend traditional marriage … one man, one woman.” But whether or not our discussion gives enough attention to the alliance between the Religious Right and the Republican Party, we nonetheless agree with Professor Edgell that America's political landscape was reshaped when the Republicans, in concert with leaders of the Religious Right, made sex and family issues salient in the nation's politics. And we further agree with her in acknowledging both that mediating institutions have played a major role in shaping public debate on religion and morality, and that more could be said on that important subject.

There is one point on which we will agree to disagree with Professor Edgell: the extent to which conservative religious leaders “wove together views on sexual morality with attitudes toward sexuality and gender.” Frankly, we expected to see a tight connection between attitudes on sexual morality and gender roles but, instead, we found that evangelicals' attitudes toward women's rights followed the same liberalizing trend as the rest of the population. As we write, “Traditional gender norms … were at most a modest and fading factor in the rise of evangelicalism” (115).

The common theme in these reviews that we find most encouraging is that American Grace can serve as a springboard for future research. Often, the call for more research is an empty platitude, the sort of thing one says when there is nothing else to say. For religion, this is not the case. With some notable exceptions, including this very group of reviewers, political science has let the field of religion lie fallow. (Sociologists have done better in the study of religion, but even there the subject deserves a higher profile.) More research on religion certainly is needed, if only to make up for lost time. We like Eric McDaniel's description of American Grace as a conversation starter. Given its diversity and dynamism, there are many rich conversations still to be had about American religion. Our hope is that social scientists will participate, publicly, in those conversations, drawing on the tools of our trade as they do so.