We all know that the United States is a huge country whose settlement patterns in the past and population movements in the present are as complex as they are fascinating. This reality can get lost in broad discussions of religion and religion and politics in America. Mark Silk and Andrew Walsh's excellent One Nation, Divisible presents a valuable corrective should any of us forget the reality and importance of regionalism in American religion or regionalism's consequences for religion and politics and politicians. The authors’ regionalist perspective is fascinating, and it is a pleasure to read how fully and skillfully these articulate authors develop this theme in their book.

As One Nation, Divisible unfolds, it becomes both less and more impressive and informative than the previous eight edited volumes of the “Region by Region” project with which it is associated. It is less in that it does not, and could not, provide the intensive detail on any particular region that the single, specific-region-focused volumes did so well. However, it is more in that even as it offers a stimulating entrée to every region of the United States, it brings the whole together in a lively and plausible account of religion, politics, and region across the entire nation. Indeed, this book is a genuine chest of riches. Every page is packed with information presented in readable prose and with an economy that is more than welcome. It is not a tome to be skimmed quickly; rather it calls on the reader to reflect thoughtfully on what every page and every section presents and argues.

One important aspect of the book is its historical treatment. One Nation, Divisible gives the reader a history of religion in each region, often each state, and sometime parts of individual states. This is a significant accomplishment given the complexity of this history. This reader learned from the authors’ account of history of religion in the United States and was pleased that it was always accessibly presented. The authors give a good sense of religious change over time in the United States and foster an appreciation of the complex character of religion, organized and unorganized, in the country not just today but over time.

Just as solid is the book's parallel examination of the many varieties of religion and spirituality in the present-day United States, which the authors ably integrate into their regional discussions. This is simply a superb introduction to religion and regionalism today. Which regional discussions are most interesting will vary with the reader and his or her own knowledge, but I learned from them all. Some examples illustrate the range of the book's treatments. Thus there is an effective contrast of the religious and political worlds of Denver and Colorado Springs, a fascinating study of the “spiritual liquidity” of Los Angeles and California as a whole, and a frank consideration of the “environmentalist civil religion” in the Pacific Northwest in which the authors explain the mix of alternative spiritualities and the determined evangelical Christian counterculture with aplomb. I especially admired the calm and thoughtful discussion of southern evangelicalism, which reaches across many versions of biblical faith among several races and in many places.

Interwoven in this picture are some classic political stories, events, and biographies as they have mixed with religious history and regional histories. No matter who or what falls within this book's political discussions, its own accounting of religion and politics, the treatment is sensitive. There are no broadsides and there is no rhetoric, but rather steady, careful observations and information. I found illuminating, for example, the authors’ reflections on the relative liberalism of New England Catholicism, its contrast with that of Midwest Catholicism, and the real political implications this difference has had. These include, not least, part of the explanation for the prominence of such liberal Catholic politicians as Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, and the Catholic Church's stumbling efforts in New England to block abortion and same-sex marriage.

The setting for the book is the result of detailed quantitative data on regional religious affiliation and identification derived from several dependable databases which are carefully described in the preface. The plentiful use of these data throughout the book nicely complements the book's qualitative discussions, forming a whole that makes this work informative on many levels. Occasionally one senses the fallacy of misplaced concreteness in some of the specific data reports for one group or another in one place or another, but overall the data portrait is helpful, clear, and convincing.

The final chapter discusses the religious-political implications of the 2004 and 2006 elections and, much more valuably, places the authors’ entire analysis into a coherent context. As they view the nation's religious regionalism and pluralism and its inevitable intersection with politics, they are optimistic. Not everyone would necessarily share their sunny perspective, but it makes sense from authors whose book we may read as a kind of celebration of the fascinating complexity of the United States in its regions and in its religion and politics.