Volume 23, Number 17 · October 28, 1976
Getting Religion
By John H. Schaar
A Nation of Behavers
by Martin E. Marty
University of Chicago Press, 239 pp., $8.95
The New Religious Consciousness
edited by Charles Y. Glock, edited by Robert N. Bellah
University of California Press, 408 pp., $14.95
The Evangelicals: What They Believe, Who They Are, Where They Are Changing
edited by David F. Wells, edited by John D. Woodbridge
Abingdon Press, 304 pp., $8.95
Martin Marty tries to cover everything in his new book on American religion, with the result of saying little about anything. He offers a sketch of the national religious terrain at the moment, dividing the ground into six main regions of religious identification and loyalty, and describing the social outlooks of the inhabitants of each region. Marty treats 'Mainline Religion' (e.g., Catholics, Jews, Episcopalians, Lutherans), Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism, the Pentecostal and Charismatic sects, the new religions (mostly Asian in origin), Ethnic Religion, and 'Civil Religion'—a term which came into prominence some ten years ago in an essay by Robert N. Bellah, and whose meaning is more obscure now than it was then, despite an enormous amount of scholarly attention. A recent bibliography compiled on Civil Religion runs to ten pages, and a recent collection of essays distinguishes five quite different uses and interpretations of the term. The scholars seem to agree that there is something out there, somewhere, having to do with religious influence and rhetoric in public life, but they are not at all sure about what or where it is. It is a case of the blind men and the elephant.
Review, 3223 words
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