Inventing American Religion: Polls, Surveys, and the Tenuous Quest for a Nation’s Faith

“The polling industry speaks largely through a megaphone so loudly that criticisms can hardly be heard,” writes acclaimed sociologist Robert Wuthnow of Princeton University. In his newest book, Wuthnow worries about the way polls and Gallup surveys have become increasingly influential in how people understand the nature of “American religion” (whatever that is, Wuthnow cautions), and that even religious leaders and academics have come to rely on them for understanding the subject. Wuthnow’s extensive historical analysis in the first two-thirds of this texts covers everything from a history of surveys going back to the 19th century, to an overview of the shift to public polls, the rise of the importance of polls in understanding how Americans identify and feel about religion, and the rise of the pollster as expert on American religion. In the book’s final third, Wuthnow mounts an extensive critique of the place polls and their interpreters occupy in the media and public’s imagination as providing expertise on this idea of “American religion.” Wuthnow’s latest will be a must for scholars in the field, but his prose is dense and will likely be slowgoing for the popular reader. (Oct.)