Robert Putnam and David Campbell produced a landmark work with American Grace. It is readable, engaging, and exhaustively researched. It is also, in my opinion, dated.  

Published in 2010, American Grace overviews American religion from roughly 1900 to the time of publication. While earlier periods of American history are mentioned, Putnam and Campbell cover the subject only as far back as one might consider in living memory. This is important to note. American Grace is a work of contemporary cultural anthropology, not history. 

The structure of the book is simple. Although chapters alone are the nominal dividers, chapters two, seven, and ten demarcate the book into three parts. These three chapters are collections of vignettes, each featuring in-depth looks at a few American congregations. The selected congregations all illustrate concepts which are covered in the chapters following the vignettes. The congregations profiled include a large Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod congregation in Texas, a small Episcopal parish in Massachusetts, a Mormon ward in Utah, and a Reform Jewish synagogue in Illinois. From the profiles, we see that Campbell and Putnam are interested in American religiosity, not merely American Christianity. However, their depiction of American religiosity is unbalanced in several ways.  

First, an ever-greater share of American religious life takes place in startup movements and independent churches. Yet only one of the Christian churches profiled is “non-denominational” (Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota; profiled over pages 320-334).  

It is surprising to see only one such profile, considering that Putnam and Campbell give us back-to-back profiles of two Episcopal congregations (37-54) and of two Catholic parishes (211-230). This choice is made even stranger by the fact that both profile pairs tell very similar stories: One “healthy” congregation in the given tradition, and one “unhealthy” congregation. The “unhealthy” congregation is mostly elderly and uninvolved in its community, while the “healthy” congregation has an active role in its community and strong influence on the next generation. Could one of these not have been trimmed to profile another independent church? In its coverage of Christian churches, American Grace has a surprisingly unbalanced focus on denominational congregations. 

Second, it is startling that there is no overview of American Muslim life in this book. The authors apologize for this lack in a few places, noting that American Muslims constituted such a minority that they found themselves “limited in what we can report” (16).  

There were 2.35 million Muslims in the United States in 2007, according to Pew Research; as of 2020, according to the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (an American research and advocacy organization focused on American Muslims), there are four million actively religious American Muslims. For comparison, according to Pew Research findings published in 2021, there are slightly over four million actively religious Jews in the United States. In 2022, religious sociologist Ryan Burge estimated a population of 4.4 million active Mormons. These groups are comparable in size to American Muslims, and they are shrinking. Islam is growing. Yet both Jewish and Mormon congregations are given “airtime” in American Grace, while Islam is not. A balanced overview of American religiosity in 2025 must discuss American Muslims. 

A related critique is that the discussion of the “religious nones” demographic is brief. While that is understandable, given Putnam and Campbell’s focus on organized religious expression, a reader who is hoping to better understand the dechurched will not find much to help them here. The most salient portions to that end are the authors’ observations regarding personal religious piety. Examples include their note that saying grace before a meal is a strong predictor of religiosity (10), their data-supported conclusion that religious Americans are more generous and more prone to volunteering (444-454), and their remarks on the tendency of politicians to appeal to a “power greater than any of us” (518, quoting George W. Bush). Their explanations of the “My Friend Al” and “My Aunt Susan” principles would also be helpful in understanding the “nones” and unaffiliated among our countrymen. 

Those portions dealing with individual practices of piety are where the book’s subtitle, “How Religion Divides and Unites Us,” is observed. On the whole, though, the subtitle is misleading. Putnam and Campbell avoid theological or doctrinal discussions, and without such discussions, the only “unity” or “division” on which they can comment are outward expressions of religiosity. 

In addition to these critiques, the book shows its age against a rapidly changing backdrop. Their remarks on waning religiosity coincide with the COVID-19 pandemic’s blow to worship attendance, but the book could not conceive of or reflect upon the overall change to the religious landscape of America brought about by the pandemic. Similarly, the comments in the 2011 epilogue (569ff) on the decrease in overt politicking at churches between 2006 and 2011 don’t reflect current trends (such as political rallies featuring Charismatic preachers, or “Christian nationalism” being regularly discussed in the media).  

Pastors might also find it interesting to offer the surveys given by Putnam and Campbell to their own congregations. Caveat emptor, however. A congregation’s shepherd may find himself dismayed by the results, or, better, moved to redouble efforts at teaching the faith. Such an encouragement is found in this anecdote from a conversation between the authors and Missouri Synod Lutheran theologians: 

[The theologians] were shocked that such a high percentage [89%] of Americans believe there are many ways to get to heaven… Another member of the audience proposed that, surely, Missouri Synod Lutherans do not take such a casual view toward salvation… On-the-spot analysis of the 2006 Faith Matters data stored on Putnam’s laptop revealed that 86 percent of Missouri Synod Lutherans said that a good person who is not of their faith could indeed go to heaven… One [theologian] wanly said that as teachers of the Word, they had failed. (540) 

The weaknesses I have noted are weighty enough issues to recommend against picking up this book. If it were a slimmer volume, perhaps. But the publication date, as well as the sheer size of the volume, counts against it for a reader who seeks the zeitgeist.