Alexis de Tocqueville, the French diplomat who visited North America for nine months in 1831–1832 and published an instant classic, Democracy in America. Among Tocqueville’s enduring observations was the religiosity of Americans. “On my arrival in the United States it was the religious aspect of the country that first struck my eye,” Tocqueville wrote.1 In one of his most famous assessments, he concluded that “there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.”
