Inventing American Religion
Polls, Surveys, and the Tenuous Quest for a Nation's Faith
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- $26.99
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- $26.99
Publisher Description
Today, a billion-dollar-a-year polling industry floods the media with information. Pollsters tell us not only which political candidates will win, but how we are practicing our faith. How many Americans went to church last week? Have they been born again? Is Jesus as popular as Harry Potter? Polls tell us that 40 percent of Americans attend religious services each week. They show that African Americans are no more religious than white Americans, and that Jews are abandoning their religion in record numbers. According to leading sociologist Robert Wuthnow, none of that is correct. Pollsters say that attendance at religious services has been constant for decades. But during that time response rates in polls have plummeted, robotic "push poll" calls have proliferated, and sampling has become more difficult. The accuracy of political polling can be known because elections actually happen. But there are no election results to show if the proportion of people who say they pray every day or attend services every week is correct. A large majority of the public doubts that polls can be trusted, and yet night after night on TV, polls experts sum up the nation's habits to an eager audience of millions.
Inventing American Religion offers a provocative new argument about the influence of polls in contemporary American society. Wuthnow contends that polls and surveys have shaped-and distorted-how religion is understood and portrayed in the media and also by religious leaders, practitioners, and scholars. He calls for a robust public discussion about American religion that extends well beyond the information provided by polls and surveys, and suggests practical steps to facilitate such a discussion, including changes in how the results of polls and surveys are presented.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"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.
