Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World

In the early twenty-first century it had become a cliché that there was a "God Gap" between a more religious United States and a more secular Europe. The apparent religious differences between the United States and western Europe continue to be a focus of intense and sometimes bitter debate between three of the main schools in the sociology of religion. According to the influential "Secularization Thesis," secularization has been an integral part of the processes of modernization in the Western world since around 1800. For proponents of this thesis, the United States appears as an anomaly and they accordingly give considerable attention to explaining why it is different. For other sociologists, however, the apparently high level of religiosity in the USA provides a major argument in their attempts to refute the Thesis.

Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World provides a systematic comparison between the religious histories of the United States and western European countries from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century, noting parallels as well as divergences, examining their causes and especially highlighting change over time. This is achieved by a series of themes which seem especially relevant to this agenda, and in each case the theme is considered by two scholars. The volume examines whether American Christians have been more innovative, and if so how far this explains the apparent "God Gap." It goes beyond the simple American/European binary to ask what is "American" or "European" in the Christianity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in what ways national or regional differences outweigh these commonalities.

David N. Hempton is Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies, and John Lord O'Brian Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School.

Hugh McLeod is Emeritus Professor of Church History at the University of Birmingham.

Introduction, Hugh McLeod
Part I: Church, State, and Money
1. The Established Churches and Secularization in Imperial Britain, c.1830-1930, Stewart J. Brown
2. Religious Markets, Capital Markets, and Church Finances in Industrializing America, Eric Baldwin
Part II: Evangelicalism
3. Evangelicalism and Secularization in Britain and America from the 18th Century to the Present, David Bebbington
4. Media and the Expansion of American Evangelicalism, Heather Curtis
Part III: Born in America
5. The Enemy of my Enemy is sometimes somewhat Useful: The Complicated Relationship of New Religious Movements and Secularization, David Holland
6. Mormons, Materialism, and the Struggle against the Ideology of Separation, Colleen McDannell
Part IV: Gender
7. Women's History and Religious Innovation, Ann Braude
8. Gendering Religion in Modern Europe, Tine van Osselaer
Part V: Popular Culture
9. Popular Culture and Pentecostalism: Comparing Britain and the United States, Randall Stephens
10. Muscular Christianity: European and American, Hugh McLeod
Part VI: World War, Cold War and Post-War Revival
11. GI Religion and Post-War Revival in the United States, Michael Snape
12. European Post-War Revival? US Evangelical Missionaries in Germany and the UK, 1945-55, Uta Balbier
Part VII: Catholicism in the Era of Vatican II
13. Is there an American Exceptionalism? American and German Catholics in Comparison, Wilhelm Damberg
14. How Exceptional? US Catholics since World War II, Leslie Woodcock Tentler
Part VIII: The 1970s and After
15. Of Numeracy and Necromancy: Church Growth in the Post-Secularization Era, Kip Richardson
16. Religion, Territory, and Choice: Contrasting Configurations, Grace Davie
Conclusions
17. 'Religious America, Secular Europe': Are they really so different? If so, since when and why?, Hugh McLeod
18. Small Differences and Differential Innovation: Secularization in Europe and the United States, David N. Hempton