As the editors of this collection convincingly contend, “If American history once had a religion problem, . . . that is no longer the case” (6). The editors then double down on this thesis by announcing a “religious turn in American history” (7). Readers might wonder if the truth lies somewhere in between. Still, as this volume indicates, U.S. religion has become fashionable enough a topic that it now draws in many scholars who could hardly be described as card-carrying religious historians. Something similar has long been true of political history, with its innumerable works on political culture and smaller number of electorally- or institutionally-centered studies.
The volume's contributors, most of whom are in the early stages of their academic careers, seemingly were selected for their abilities to assimilate religion into the manifold narratives of political history, broadly defined. Some of the essays draw from published monographs, while others point toward forthcoming works. All are elegantly trimmed, many shine, and none fall flat. Combined, they suggest that the new religious history will have staying power.
While the essays cover time periods ranging from the Gilded Age to the start of the twenty-first century, most are written with an eye toward explaining recent phenomena. In the opening essay, for example, David Mislin shows how opposition to divorce liberalization during the late 1800s brought together Catholic and Protestant elites, foreshadowing the conservative ecumenical coalitions that reappeared a century later. Lila Corwin Berwin posits the historical inseparability of Jewish politics and urban politics in the United States. Both milieus evinced a “version of the American liberal promise to balance between individual freedom and group protections” (36). Matthew S. Hedstrom explores the mid-twentieth century roots of the rapidly growing portion of the American population that might be described as often spiritual and sometimes religious, but always resolutely unaffiliated. Such “spiritual cosmopolitanism,” he writes, in a nod toward an emerging scholarly consensus, is the offspring of liberal Protestantism (71).
Several contributors link their topics with other subfields. In the arena of economic history, Darren Dochuk's essay contrasts independent oilman and fundamentalist patron Lyman Stewart with petroleum magnate and liberal Protestant booster John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Fundamentalist-modernist divisions thus had clear corporate analogues, extending from the oil patches of California to the mission fields of China. Molly Worthen's chapter on the theological roots of the Christian Right encapsulates her project of treating theology as a kind of “ideology” and, hence, as part of intellectual and political history alike (113). Lily Geismer shows how postwar suburban Boston, a region that was as religiously active as it was religiously diverse, modeled the type of socially liberal and economically moderate politics that became a Democratic Party commonplace by the end of the century. Her work echoes Hedstrom's notion of diffuse, enduring liberal Protestant influence.
The closing essay, composed with inimitable flare by Bethany Moreton, suggests the promise of the volume's wide-net approach to religious history, as well as some possible limits. Moreton uses former Speaker of the House turned conservative hustler, Newt Gingrich, as a starting point for explaining the post-1960 “conservative rapprochement among the country's most observant Christians” (134). Gingrich's religious journey took him from mainline Lutheranism to megachurch Southern Baptism and finally to JP2 Catholicism. Moreton's emphasis on conservative ecumenism artfully loops back to Mislin's case study of divorce politics a century earlier. Moreton risks overreach, though, when she posits a too-smooth connection between the high-tech economy that Gingrich had long celebrated, and the traditionalist family values that he came to support (if not personally practice). Right-wing supply-side writer George Gilder certainly drew such a connection, but few, if any, of the entrepreneurs who actually drove the tech boom would have agreed. Bill Gates is more Rockefeller than Stewart. As Moreton's closing riff on the nation's evolving religious mores appears to concede, the millennial generation might ultimately be heirs to none of the above.
Some of the new conventional wisdom about religious history—namely, God's presumed political equivalence to gold—might well dissipate should the present trend toward religious non-affiliation intensify. Even if the vogue of religious history turns out to be something less than a turn, though, these essays and the larger projects they draw from will be of enduring value.
