God and the Atlantic: America, Europe, and the Religious Divide

by Thomas Albert Howard

Since the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the United States and Western Europe's paths to modernity have diverged sharply with respect to religion. In short, Americans have maintained much friendlier ties with traditional forms of religion than their European counterparts. What explains this transatlantic religious divide?
Accessing the topic though nineteenth and early twentieth-century European commentary on the United States, Thomas Albert Howard argues that an 'Atlantic gap' in religious matters has deep and complex historical roots, and enduringly informs some strands of European disapprobation of the United States. While exploring in the first chapters 'Old World' disquiet toward the young republic's religious dynamics, the book turns in the final chapters and focuses on more constructive European assessments of the United States. Acknowledging the importance of Alexis de Tocqueville for the topic, Howard argues that a widespread overreliance on Tocqueville as interpreter of America has had a tendency to overshadow other noteworthy European voices. Two underappreciated figures here receive due the Protestant Swiss-German church historian, Philip Schaff, and the French Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain.
While the transatlantic religious divide has received commentary from journalists and sociologists in recent decades, this is the first major work of cultural and intellectual history devoted to the subject.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Christian, Religion, Cultural

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 20, 2011

About the author

Professor of History and the Humanities at Valparaiso University, Indiana. He formerly directed the Center for Faith and Inquiry and was Professor of History at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts. He completed his MA (1992) and Ph.D. (1996) at the University of Virginia, concentrating in modern European intellectual and religious history. He is founding director of Gordon College's honors program, the Jerusalem and Athens Forum, a one-year, great-books course of study in the history of Christian thought and literature. He served as principal grant writer and project director of a multimillion-dollar project funded by the Lilly Endowment, entitled "Critical Loyalty: Christian Vocation at Gordon College."

Reviews

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, this was a good one. I have been having great luck with my books recently. This is a learned discussion of the religious divide between Europe and America. A lot of gold here. It turns out the high levels of religiosity in America call out for an explanation . . . and there is one.

[Dougald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Albert Howard is the Stephen Phillips Chair of History at Gordon College in Wenham, MA. He has published several works concerning the history of Christian thought. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in European Intellectual history.

God and the Atlantic: America, Europe, and the Religious Divide is a fascinating book that goes into great detail about the views of Europeans conerning American Religion during 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. There are two basic European views that Howard describes in this work. These views are dependent on whether one was an old-world conservative, or whether they were a secularist.

The first view discussed from the old-world conservatives would be that of derision. They viewed American religion as a place filled with various religious sects. In fact, America is portrayed as a land where each man has his own religion and shares nothing in common with his neighbor. Some of the views of the European elite were downright fictitious holding that Americans had some of the most abnormally fantastic rituals the world had ever seen. Part of this was due to their political and religious bent towards a government that was tied to the state and saw any such diversity as unable to create any uniformity.

The second view could be connected with the secularist views that came about after the French Revolution. Those who were secularist also looked over to the New World with some derision because they saw a fantastic (in the since of fantasy) religion. Or, perhaps, they saw too much religion in the new world for their taste. The secularist followed the evolutionary view of history espoused by Auguste Comte and Karl Marx to name a few. Therefore, their view of America was that it was regressing back to a pre-modern superstitious religion; not progressing towards a scientific, philisophical ideal.

In contrast, Howard holds up two European born intellectuals who spent some time in the United States. The first is Philip Schaff and the second is Jacques Maritain. He devotes more attention to Maritain, and probably rightly so. Maritain pointed out the European views were not based on actual first-hand knowledge of the United States but rather they were rooted in the two ideologies mentioned above. Therefore these views were skewed. Maritain offered a mediating voice to both sides of the Atlantic.

There is much more that can be said on this subject. However, this is only a review. What surprised me most about the work was the conclusion. Howard, a fine writer, provides some excellent reflections given his evidence. He connects these views to the post-War (World War II) views of America by Europeans and shows that they are the backdrop for the current ideological division between America and Europe. The conclusion is very insightful and I highly recommend it. But you must first wade through some of the more laborious lists of people and the quotations of their beliess (which I can imagine for some may be boring...not for me).

With that said, there are several advantages to reading this book. First, history always seems to bring a sobering effect to current events. The religious and political divide is connected to the two diametrically opposed views in the U.S. today. Howard's work provides a sober, even-handed approach to current controversy. Second, as an evangelical Christian, Howard's work allows me to see the current intellectual trends going on in Europe as they enter post-secularism. This is also sobering as it seems too many Christians are bombastic towards such movements (because they view them as pagan) and it may help Christians begin a dialog with those who maybe don't believe the same about religion as they do. In short, it may help the Christian to be more conversant with others from differing world views. Finally, I think anyone, from either the right or the left politically, could pick up Howard's book and find it to be a great benefit in understanding the view that is "across the aisle." It can help someone to understand, and possibly appreciate, someone with different political and religious views and perhaps provide a balanced approach to how the nation may move forward despite its diversity in the future without giving too much sway to either evangelicalism or secularism. Thus, preserving the founding right of this country to worship in whatever way, within reason, one sees fit.

[Dave Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Albert Howard offers a fine educated, researched and provoking dialogue surrounding some assumed questions regarding the past and current religious divide between Europe and America. Perhaps most startling is the way his concluding remarks land us smack in the middle of a current American landscape that we immediately recognize. It is quite revealing to begin to see many of the issues that plague our time in what is an ever changing political and religious landscape that somehow remain directly connected with the pages of history. Many of us intuitively know this to be true, but it is very easy to get lost in preconceived conceptions and tendencies that suggest our problems are entirely unique to our current circumstance. We can sense the commonalities with tensions of the old world and the 15th to 20th century landscape throughout the pages of this book, but it still comes across as startling and surprising when you reach the end and recognize that not much has changed at all.

The basic focus of Howard deals with two central perspectives regarding the shift from the Old World to the New World. These two perspectives are signified by the right or left, or better yet by the religious and the secular lines of the Old World perspective. To be fair, Howard does explain that both religious and secularist lines entertain a right and left, and both responded in specific ways to the rise of the New World reality. From the religious side, the Old World perspective, guided by the powerful Catholic Church, decried the free world of America's voluntary approach to religion. The pages of history show the primary concern to be the lack of both history and clarity in what was quickly representing a conflicted and divided religious landscape in the new free world. In a world that was governed by the wants of the people and which connected directly to the allure of progress and personal piety, how would it be possible to maintain a faithful and universal religious Christian foundation. After all, an environment that could give rise to something as powerful as the Mormon faith was something they deemed dangerous for the future of the faith.

On the secularist side, specifically following the French revolution and its role in helping bring distinction between separation of Church and State, the main issue was the seeming backwards trending movement of America regarding the place of religion in society at large. For the segment of European thought that tended towards a Marxists style or influenced approach to religion as heavy mythology and fairy tales, America represented a downright confusing and backwards looking development. It was a New World that was appearing more open to religion rather than closed.

Both the religious and secularist side shared to a degree a further critique on what they felt was a superficial religious expression that had more in common with the rise of capitalism than the historical creedal and sacramental theology. Especially concerning the predominant Methodist and Baptists streams, the charismatic demeanor of the American character and worship held little in common with the more sacred and contemplative and intellectually driven European approach.

What complicates the whole scenario is the divide that we find in Europe as well, between the East and the West and between the religious and the secular. What Howard does is narrow in on two lesser known European thinkers who spent time in North America and came away with a more sympathetic and open view than we often find in popularized view. In fact, he argues that it really was the direct influence of a select few that tainted the American persona in the eyes of the Old World and progressive Europe despite the fact that many of these predominant views failed to be informed by actual contact and experience with American culture. In other words, there is much room for discussion on the larger historical context that informs every personal view whether old or new, and much room for further examination of the positive and negative affects of the New World's approach to the religious/secular divide. This book is Howard's attempt to table this discussion, and he does the subject good justice.

As I mentioned earlier, the wonder of this book is that it takes the pages of history and connects them directly with our own modern day experience. It is from here that he can pen some provoking questions for the future. We face the same issues today. There remains a tendency to engage in a certain mockery or, one could argue, a misinformed commentary of the U.S. as a silly, self absorbed and ignorant society. There remains a strong divide between intellectually/historically driven and emotionally responsive religious expression. There remains a certain confusion in the U.S. over whether it is a religious or political institution, or both, and if so how it is that one or the other plays a more predominant role in influencing the decisions of a progressive state. If Howard is right, much of this stems all the way back to the first World War, and much of this leads to questions that we should be asking world wide of the future of our religious and political approach regardless of which side of the Atlantic we find ourselves. It is equally interesting to trace the development of the Calvinist stream of thought from Europe to playing such a powerful role in the developing face of the New World. This is likewise true for the Wesleyan stream. For many who critiqued the early development of America, they saw (and in some cases experienced) what they described as a confused version of Calvinist devotion that seemingly had more in common with the large businesses and growing cities of American progression. For them, something happened to those movements once they hit the American soil to cause them to seemingly go awry. Certainly this is a tainted perception that is influenced at least in part by a bias against change and progression in the New World. But certainly, there is also some truth to these concerns. It would be easy to suggest that we see these concerns being expressed today in the form of mega Churches, non denominational Churches with seemingly no sense of history at all, and a Christian market that has gone crazy since the days it formed a congenial bond with media and technology. One does not need to move far on American soil as a North American to encounter views that are exasperated over what the Church has become. And what is more interesting is in how, even in the short history of the United States, we are seeing the continued debate and tension between religion and secularist society take root in new ways. There are many movements in American bred religious groups that take us back to the Old World influence and the creedal and sacramental expressions. And the Old World secularists are just now really becoming vocal in America in a similar way as they have been in Europe since the days of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. And yet, there remains something entirely interesting about how America has approached this within its parameters as a "religious" country.

At the very least we should walk away from this book with the hope of engaging in more educated discussion. As someone who lives in North America, albeit in Canada, I have lived this Atlantic divide from a specific bias and perception. I have been encouraged to understand both the secularlist and the religious intellectualist from within their European roots. I have also been encouraged to really think on and appreciate what America brought to the table regarding religious freedom and voluntarism. I would recommend this book to anyone who would likewise desire to enter in to a more informed discussion.