The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy

by Roger Finke

Ahlstrom was not alone. Martin E. Marty, Winthrop S. Hudson, and others of this era all chose to ignore the organizational aspects of the history of American religion, including the rise and fall of denominations, and instead cast the history of American religion as a history of religious ideas. There is nothing wrong with writing histories of ideas, of course. But when general historians have done so, they nearly always adopt (at least implicitly) a model of intellectual "progress." Their history is organized on the basis of showing how new religious ideas arose and were progressively refined. Moreover, the standards against which refinement is usually judged are entirely secular-parsimony, clarity, logical unity, graceful expression, and the like. One seldom encounters standards of theological progress or refinement based on how effectively a doctrine could stir the faithful or satisfy the heart. As a result, the history of American religious ideas always turns into an historical account of the march toward liberalism. That is, religious ideas always become more refined (i.e., better) when they are shorn of mystery, miracle, and mysticism-when an active supernatural realm is replaced by abstractions concerning virtue. This preference for theological