Book Review of American Grace - Essay Example

American grace is an optimistic book that explains how Americans manage their religious diversity. This is the main cause of inequality and social conflicts experienced within America. The authors say that American religion has adopted most of the social justice-oriented change rather than promoting the positive expected changes. Therefore, the book affirms that social contacts and familiarity in America increases religious tolerance instead of theological doctrine. The authors emphasize religious history of Americans even though they draw attention on the last half of the century throughout the entire book (Putnam & Campbell 3) Who are the authors? Robert D. Putnam and David E.

Campbell wrote the book American Grace. Putnam is a political scientist and professor of public policy at Harvard University, where he lectures both the “Graduate and Undergraduate Courses”. He is a member of the National Academy of Science, a previous president of Political Science Association and a fellow of British Academy. David Campbell is a political science professor at the university of Notre Dame. He is also the founding director of Rooney Center for the study of American Democracy.

What are the author’s findings about American religion? The authors discovered interesting things about the American religion. They discovered that that religious experience and religiosity are alive in the United States. This is regardless of the fact that millennial generation present barriers to the management and the spread of religious aspects in the state. According to empirical studies, American religion is unique compared to other western nations. The authors believe that the American’s rates of religious belonging, behaving and believing are high (Putnam & Campbell 36).

In addition, the authors assert that Americans have a very complicated religious experience, which is seen in their historical tradition, races, gender, personal relations, and generational. Therefore, the authors conclude that the high level of pluralism that exists in America pervades them. The authors also insist that the potential of American pluralism developing into strife is unlikely to happen because of friendship among the believers where the importance of religious diversity is seen.

After their research, the authors determined that most of the Americans are intimately acquainted with people from other faith. This is true because their research indicated that every American has an average of at least two friends from a differing faith. Putnam and Campbell also discovered that most American Protestants highly value the Buddhists compared to the Muslims. However, the black Protestants value Muslims compared to the Buddhists. This is because most of the black Protestants are acquainted with black Muslims (Putnam & Campbell 76) The authors discovered that the American religious diversity is not as tolerant e as many people tend to think.

This is because; most of the American believers are willing to bend their basic doctrines in the name of interfaith amity. For example, most Christians and evangelical Christians believe that it is possible for the non-Christians to go to heaven. This means that they do not believe in the New Testament chapters, which insists that without Christ, no one will see the kingdom of God. In the book, the authors also discovered that almost half of the white American population diverted from their parent’s religion by turning to other religious tradition or lapsing into religious indifference (Putnam & Campbell 176).

A significant proportion of the married people in America married a person who came from different religious tradition. The authors realized the American’s perception of heaven depends on personal experience with their friends or families who come from differing religious background. The authors real