Religio-Secular... Again

A thesis about religion in American public life, which is Sightings's interest: the “secularization thesis” is helpful when one is explaining change in religious institutions, practices, ideas, and influence. But it has its limits. The presumably contrary “America-as-religious thesis” similarly helps observers and participants in American life to understand much of what goes on. But it, too, has limits. Interpreters fish for or invent other terms in efforts to be more encompassing and accurate. Sociologists and theologians rely on their bases of expertise, while we historians and journalists try to report on the American past and present with necessarily messier, less defined theses.