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

Thomas Albert Howard's "God and the Atlantic..." is a thoroughly researched examination of the contrasting religious paths between Europeans and Americans... Moving beyond Alexis de Tocqueville’s oft-quoted appraisal of American religiosity, Howard’s analysis progresses in two directions. First, he examines negative assessments both from the left (America viewed as overly religious) and the right (America’s religion is too distinct from Europe and thus represents bad religion). Second, he explores two European elites who each wrote about and lived in the United States: Philip Schaff, a Swiss-German Protestant church historian, and Jacques Maritain, a French Catholic philosopher... British intellectuals who were...