If Alexis de Tocqueville Were Here...

National Religious Broadcasters is convening this week in Nashville, and if Alexis de Tocqueville were here in the labyrinthine Opryland Hotel he would not be surprised.  Among the near record number of 5000 participants there’s little evidence of supposedly secularizing America. Instead there is on display in every direction the entrepreneurship, bric-à-brac, studied vitality and cultural effervescence of American Evangelicalism.   As Tocqueville found in 1830s America, so he would find today that American religion is very democratic, culturally adaptable and woven almost seamlessly into almost every arena of American life.  As American religion is so decentralized and individualistic, it is beyond the control of political and cultural elites who might seek to contain or control it.