Religion in America

August 1, 2011

French political scientist Lacorne offers rigorous insight from a continental European perspective on the often fraught and intimate relationship between religion and politics in the United States.

The author works from the premise that while "the American Revolution and its constitutional climax" created a new political framework, it did nothing to define a national identity. This left the field wide open for different identity narratives to emerge. The two that interest Lacorne stand in radical opposition to each other. The first, which he associates with Enlightenment philosophy and the Founding Fathers, speaks to the necessity of separating church and state so as to liberate the fledgling American nation from the burdens of history and religion. The second, which was first articulated by 19th-century Whig politicians and Romantic historians, sees American identity as "Neopuritan," the unchanging product of "a unique combination of Protestant and republican values." Lacorne looks at the evolution of these rival narratives by examining the writings of prominent French and American intellectuals past and present, such as Tocqueville, L�vy, Jefferson and Huntington. What emerges is a story of an American identity that is essentially Protestant and Christian but also riven to the core by contradictory and competing ideals. Over the course of more than 200 years, America has transformed God into a utilitarian entity that inheres uneasily in everything from its social fabric to capitalism to the global spread of American democracy. In so doing, the fabled "land of the free" clearly reveals itself as a complex product of world history rather than a lone, divinely sanctioned "city on a hill."

Forceful and intelligent.

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August 1, 2011
Religion and politics in Anglophone North America have fascinated the French since the colonial era. Voltaire thought the Quakers were creating a religious utopia in Pennsylvania. French visitors to the new U.S. debunked that notion; they thought Native Americans' religion reflected that of the ancient Greeks and recoiled from Puritanism. But then Tocqueville attributed the success of American republicanism to the democratic spirit of Puritan religiousness; his notion that Catholicism was the best match for democracy, however, stumbled over the public-school Bible wars between Protestants and Catholics. Subsequent French analysts failed to appreciate how rampant Evangelicalism diversified American Protestantism. After WWI, they thought Americans had become godless worshippers of the almighty dollar, and the rise, 50 years later, of the religious Right disconcerted them more than it did Americans. More historian than political pundit, Lacorne concludes with a thorough summary of the wall of separation between church and state and his assessment of President Obama's prosecution of faith-friendly secularism. Anyone interested in religion and politics in the U.S. stands to be deeply informed by Lacorne's lucid, intelligent book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

October 15, 2011

As a sympathetic outsider, French political scientist Lacorne (senior research fellow, Centre d'etudes et de recherches internationals, Paris; With Us or Against Us: Studies in Global Anti-Americanism) examines the complex relationship between religion and politics in American history. What makes his book most valuable is his examination of the perspectives of key French thinkers such as Voltaire, Tocqueville, and Levy along the way. Lacorne identifies two competing narratives that have shaped America's national identity. The first, largely secular, comes from Enlightenment philosophy, the Founding Fathers, and the founding documents of the nation. The second is more overtly religious and comes from the Protestant Reformation and the Puritans, seeing America as the culmination of a progression toward freedom and a "city on a hill." Out of the tension between those two narratives comes the fascinating story of religion and politics in America, one that is frequently baffling to the French. VERDICT This book provides a much welcomed viewpoint from outside our ongoing religious squabbles in American politics. Lacorne admirably avoids oversimplification while remaining eminently readable.--Brian T. Sullivan, Alfred Univ. Lib., NY

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