Today, a billion-dollar-a-year polling industry floods the media with information. Pollsters tell us not only which political candidates will win, but how we are practicing our faith. How many Americans went to church last week? Have they been born again? Is Jesus as popular as Harry Potter? Polls tell us that 40 percent of Americans attend religious services each week. They show that African Americans are no more religious than white Americans, and that Jews are abandoning their religion in record numbers. According to leading sociologist Robert Wuthnow, none of that is correct. Pollsters say that attendance at religious services has been constant for decades. But during that time response rates in polls have plummeted, robotic "push poll" calls have proliferated, and sampling has become more difficult. The accuracy of political polling can be known because elections actually happen. But there are no election results to show if the proportion of people who say they pray every day or attend services every week is correct. A large majority of the public doubts that polls can be trusted, and yet night after night on TV, polls experts sum up the nation's habits to an eager audience of millions. Inventing American Religion offers a provocative new argument about the influence of polls in contemporary American society. Wuthnow contends that polls and surveys have shaped-and distorted-how religion is understood and portrayed in the media and also by religious leaders, practitioners, and scholars. He calls for a robust public discussion about American religion that extends well beyond the information provided by polls and surveys, and suggests practical steps to facilitate such a discussion, including changes in how the results of polls and surveys are presented.

"This work provides the history of Christian fundamentalism, which emerged as a movement with that name in 1920. It first looks at the roots of the movement in evangelical revivalism before 1920. Then it considers fundamentalists' most characteristic outlooks. It describes the distinctive outlooks of Dispensational Premillennialism concerning history and modern times. Then it looks at the role of Holiness teachings, especially Keswick Holiness, in shaping fundamentalism. Fundamentalists, especially of the Presbyterian variety, were also militant defenders of traditional evangelical Protestant orthodoxy. Being a coalition of related movements, fundamentalists displayed a variety of view as to how to engage mainstream culture. These outlooks and tendencies coalesced into a nationally prominent fundamentalist movement during the years of cultural change from 1917 to 1925. The analysis looks at various dimensions of fundamentalism of the 1920s. The penultimate chapter looks more recent American fundamentalism, especially in the rise of the religious right since the 1970s. The concluding chapter reflects on the continuing legacy of fundamentalism in the twenty-first century, even as the term itself is less widely used"--