what we witnessed in the 1980s was not the birth of new religions or the return of the sacred where

religious traditions had dried up, but, rather , the revitalization and reformation of old living traditions and the assumption of public roles by precisely those religious traditions which both theories of secularization and cyclical theories of religious revival had assumed were becoming ever more privatized and irrelevant in the modern world (225) it is not reality itself which has changed, as much as our perception of it (11) it was this combination of globalization, nationalization, secular involvement, and voluntary disestablishment that led to the change of orientation from state to society and permitted the church to play a key role in processes of democratization. The national churches stopped viewing themselves as integrative community cults of the national state and adopted a new transnational, global identity which permitted them to confront prophetically both the national state and the given social order (225) Protestant fundamentalism...once it came, the call to national revival, to turn America around and to become involved in a new Christian crusade, was eagerly heard... a return from sectarian exile back to reestablishment as the hegemonic American civil religion (226) the deprivatization of modern religion has assumed three main forms. There is, first, the religions mobilization or in defense of the traditional lifeworld against various forms of state or market penetration. ... a traditionalist response to modern processes of universalization... by entering the public sphere and forcing the public discussion or contestation of certain issues, religions force modern societies to reflect publicly and collectively upon their normative structures (228) religions enter the public sphere of modern societies to question and contest the claims of the two major society systems, states and markets, to function according to their own intrinsic functionalist norms without regard to extrinsic traditional moral norms... religions may remind individuals and societies of the need to check and regulate those impersonal market mechanisms to ensure that they are accountable for the human, social, and ecological damage they may cost and that they may become more responsible to human needs (229) obstinate insistence of traditional religions on maintaing the very principle of a common good against individualist modern liberal theories which would reduce the common good to the aggregated sum of individual choices... religions remind individuals and modern societies that morality can only exist as an intersubjective normative structure and that individual choices only attain a moral dimension when they are guided or informed by intersubjective, interpersonal norms... by bring publicity into the private moral sphere and by bringing into the public sphere issues of private morality, religions force modern societies to confront the task of reconstructing reflexively and collectively their own normative foundations...they

aid in the process of practical rationalization of the traditional lifeworld and of their own normative traditions (229) Even with the nations religious diversity and Americans high level of religiosity, inter-religious relations exhibit more comity than conflict. (494) To be high in both devotion and diversity is a potentially volatile mixture. It means that people who are religious mix with other people who are equally religious in intensity, but believe in other faiths. (494) One might think that this is a recipe for religious disharmony, and that America would be coming apart at its religious seams. And yet it is not. (494) when asked whether religious diversity has been good for America 84% agree (520) Disagreements over religion can touch a raw nerve (494) American peacefully combines a high degree of religious devotion with tremendous religious diversity(4) The same fluidity means that nearly all Americans are acquainted with people of a different religious background all of this religious churn produces a jumble of relationships among people of varying religious backgrounds Americans of many different religious backgrounds increasingly came to connect with one another as neighbors, friends, and spouses which keeps religious polarization from pulling the nation apart (5) Over the last fifty years, American religion has experienced two countervailing transformations. The first is the emergence of a new religious fault line in American society. Left on its own, such a fault line could split open and tear the nation apart. The second change, however, is precisely why the fault line has not become a gaping chasm. Polarization has not been accompanied by religious segregation To the contrary, rather than cocooning into isolated religious communities, Americans have become increasingly likely to work with, live alongside, and marry people of other religions in doing so, they have come to accept people with a religious background different from theirs. It is difficult to demonize the religion, or lack of religion, of people you know, and especially, those you love. (6) Personal pluralism means that America is graced with religious harmony (36) America manages to be both religiously diverse and religiously devout because it is difficult to damn those you know and love (517) one third of all Americans are married to someone of a different religious tradition and one half are married to someone who came from a different tradition (522) Only 7% say that all of their neighbors share the same religion, and nearly a third

report that none do (522) 17% say none of their five closest friends have the same religious affiliation (523) Two out of three have at least one extended family member who is of another religion, while the average American has at least two (technically 2.4) close friends with a religious affiliation different from theirs (523) Religious diversity within social networks religious bridging will foster greater inter-religious acceptance (528) There is a positive correlation between, say, having an evangelical friend and rating evangelicals positively (528) Change in the same individuals over time to show that politics affects religion and that gaining more religions friends increases good neighborliness, civic engagement, and even happiness (528) Do you rate evangelicals positively because you have an evangelical friend, or are you friends with an evangelical because you are warm toward evangelicals? (528) In those cases where we find a significant impact of gaining a friend within a particular group, we find no evidence that the warmth leads to the friendship rather than the other way around (529) Does more bridging lead to a more positive assessment of other religious groups, even those that were not added to the friendship network? Is there spillover? In a word, the answer is yes. (532) Bridging to friends of other religions corresponds to positive feelings toward two of the most unpopular religious groups in America: the nonreligious and Mormons 3 degrees on the feeling thermometer toward people who are not religious an increase in warmth toward Mormons of 2 degrees (532) Social networks do not change much over a single year, so it is amazing that we find any effects at all The rates of inter-religious marriage has increased dramatically over the last century (533) While religious bridging appears to foster more acceptance of all religions that my seem exotic or unusual, there is even greater acceptance when a bridge is built to a member of that specific group. Thus, groups viewed coldly are those with which most Americans have little or no personal exposure. (534)

Given the small size of their respective populations, this would help to explain why Muslims and Buddhists are viewed in relatively negative terms. Mormons have a high degree of religious homogeneity within their own networks, it also helps to explain why they are perceived negatively as well. All three groups are also concentrated in particular parts of the United States, which further limits the prospects for religious bridging and thus greater acceptance. (534) These true believers live in more religiously monochromatic social environments. They are less likely to have married outsider their faith, and they are much more insistent than other Americans that their children remain inside that faith. They are less likely than other Americans to have ties of kinship or friendship outside their own faith (546) Issue by Issue Putting the most religious Americans next to the least religious reveals that, on some matters, they differ dramatically. On others, there are few differences at all. (21) 61% of those at the top of the religiosity index say that gambling is always wrong, compared to only 10% of those at the bottom of the index. Roughly the same percentages also believe that it is always wrong to watch moves with a lot of violence, profanity, or sexuality (22) While 4% of the least religious portion of the population say that premarital sex is always wrong, only 3% of those in the top 20% of religiosity say that sex before marriage is never wrong (22) Opinions on abortion vary substantially according to religiosity. 65% of the least religious Americans believe in a womans unfettered right to choose when it comes to abortion, a position held by only 13% of the most religious. (22) Nearly nine out of ten highly religious people say that homosexual activity is always wrong, in contrast with two out of ten of secular Americans (22) Both abortion and homosexuality have come to be especially salient in contemporary politics, which in turn has lead to a religious divide at the ballot box (22) Smaller differences are seen on other matters. When it comes to the public policy question of how the government spends tax money, religious and nonreligious Americans are more alike than different majorities of both support the liberal position of more spending to help the poor (22-23) Religion = Prepackaged Values

the consumer attitude that the autonomous individual manifests vis-a-vis a widened range of options. As a buyer, the individual confronts a wide assortment of religious representations... manufactured, packaged, and sold by specialized service agencies... a necessarily precarious private system of ultimate meanings (36) Religion in a Communal Sense Religion is not an arbitrary relation of the individual man to a supernatural power; it is a relation of all the members of a community to the power that has the god of the community at heart. -Robertson Smith (44) religious roles and institutions... the result of routinization of charisma... the personal power of charisma can be confirmed and maintained only by the recognition of others... charisma is an eminently social category... it expresses a relation between leaders and followers, which is the foundation for the transformation of charisma into institutional religion. (44) religion is always a group, a collective, affair; that there is no religion without a unified system of beliefs and practices... which unite into, one single moral community (44) the presence or absence of a church is... what helps define religion... there is not religion without a church (44) Robertson Smith: religion did not exist for the saving of souls but for the preservation and welfare of society (45) Religious communities... are constituted in and through the association and congregation of individuals in response to a religious message (45) Misc we need to rethink the issue of the changing boundaries between differentiated spheres and the possible structural roles religion may have within those differentiated spheres as well as the role it may have in challenging the boundaries themselves (7) there is a general trend toward the demobilization and privatization of civil society once the hour of civil society and its mobilized resistance against he authoritarian state passes and political society and its forms of representation and mediation by professional political elites become institutionalized (222) Religious ardor... gave them organizational forms through which to plunge into conflicting factions. (24)

Universities and legislatures broke along the same religious lines as the churches (24) Being so closely wound up with ethnicity, religion has the potential to dovetail with, and aggravate, racial and ethnic tensions (493) devaluation and relativization of this world for the sake of a higher one became democratized and popularized by the new salvation religions (49) modern walls of separation between church and state keep developing all kinds of cracks through which both are able to penetrate each other (41) religiously infected issues emerged on the national political agenda (3) Always standing against the Social Gospel is robust American faith in individual good and evil. Today the neo-Puritans have roared back in many aspects of communal life. (19) The shock and two aftershocks conservative religion grew in both size and prominence including political prominence. And then, in response to that growth and presence in partisan politics, there has been a second backlash in which increasing numbers of Americans, especially young people, have turned away from religion. These seismic events have reverberated throughout American society, and so the moderate religious middle the once thriving segment of the religions spectrum has shrunk. (548) This state of flux has actually contributed to religious polarization. A fluid religious environment means that people gradually, but continually, sort themselves into like-minded clusters their commonality defined not only by religion, but also by the social and political beliefs that go along with their religion. (5) A pocket sociology blames modernity for slowly, surely eroding the bulwarks of belief. western intellectual life has been shedding its links to religion since at least as far back as the 16th century. U.S. News and World Report (22) the revitalization and the assumption of public roles by precisely those religious traditions which both theories of secularization and cyclical theories of religious revival had assumed were becoming ever more marginal and irrelevant in the modern world (5) the correlation between decreasing rates of religious beliefs and practices and increasing rates of industrialization, urbanization, education, and the like (214) Yet it is also important to note that not every American is so religious, or religious at all 15% never attend religious services 17% do not identify with a religion (8)

Americans universally, albeit not universally, identify with a religion (8) Paraphrased US ranks 7th worldwide in weekly attendance at religious service (9) 38% of Americans report being an active member of a church or religious organization, compared to only 16% of Australians, 9% of Italians, and 4% of the French. (9) Religion = Most Popular Activity More Americans are involved in a religious congregation than in any other type of association, group, or club. 62% of Americans have a particular place of worship where they attend services. (29) Many Americans have a level of involvement in their congregation that exceeds mere membership. 36% of the total population report participating in [some] form of religious education while a quarter participate in prayer or other small groups associated with their congregation (29) 14% of all Americans have served as an officer or committee member within a congregation (29) 55% of churchgoers have invited someone to visit their congregation (30) the congregation is an all-purpose association with members who choose it (30) With congregations as the dominant mode of religious organization, religious communities are a common nexus for friendships whether because one becomes a member of a congregation and finds friends there, or one makes friends and then joins their congregation. (32) The prevalence of friends made at ones place of worship serves to illustrate the social significant of Americans congregations. Faith-based social networks tend to foster good citizenship generosity and civic engagement and strengthen the connections voters make between their religion and their politics. (32)