Religion and Politics in America: Faith, Culture and Strategic Choices.

• Author: Jones, David

The growing political strength of the fundamentalist Christian bloc has sparked a new interest in the role that religion plays in the American political process. However, much of the media's coverage has focused specifically on the Christian Coalition, ignoring the role other religious persuasions have played on the political constituent, from before the foundation of the republic until the present day. At the same time, Christian groups are frequently portrayed as a monolithic bloc, with no deference paid to the influences of race, gender, class or even denominational doctrine; factors which quite obviously impact political sentiments. Thus popular portrayal of the religion-politics interaction is often at once too narrowly focused on fundamentalist Christian ideology, and too broad in its portrayal of Christian-based political movements as a united movement.

Robert Booth Fowler and Allen D. Hertzke attempt to analyze how significant the connection between religious affiliation and political expression actually is, especially when other sociological variables are considered. The result is a book that weakens many of the arguments about religious influence on political views, but does not attempt to reinterpret the relationship in a more comprehensive manner. Instead, the authors use polling data and surveys to emphasize the complexity of the dynamic between religion and politics, a technique that is far more descriptive than explanatory.

The format of the book is highly accessible. Each chapter introduces an aspect of the religious-political phenomena, and it in turn is broken down into subheadings with their own respective charts and statistics. At the end of every chapter is a tidy summary and a list of suggested further reading. all in all, it reads like a high school civics textbook, which in fact may be the intent of the authors.

The analysis of the modern function for religion in politics begins with the historical role religion played in the formation of American society and the foundation of the nation. From the earliest settlements, religion shaped the political and social consciousness in America. The Puritans in particular contributed two competing strains to the American psyche. The first is the concept of America as the New Jerusalem, a model of holiness and righteousness to serve as an example for all other nations. This conception of the United States as "a shining city upon a hill" continues to influence American policy...