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One big obstacle to seeing the secularization thesis as a universal rule is, of course, the United States. The point scarcely needs elaboration. If we imagine a decayed church building like that portrayed by Bruce but standing in an American city, it would almost certainly not be transformed into a warehouse, but would rather have been appropriated by some vibrant new Christian denomination, probably linked to a new immigrant group. Yet at the same time, older ethnic communities, white and black, assuredly have not abandoned religious practice. Driving around the suburbs of an American city, we see a striking amount of new church construction, generally the work of a conservative or fundamentalist group. If you want to amaze European visitors, just take them for a Sunday drive past a suburban church or two with their sprawling parking lots, those contemporary witnesses to soaring faith that might just be the unlovely modern counterparts of the Gothic spires of the Middle Ages.
So what is happening here? Bruce replies that a counter-example here or there doesn't undermine the paradigm. And in any case, he adds, he and the scholars upon whose work he is building never said that secularization was a universal process; rather, it applies "to religion in western Europe (and its North American and Australasian offshoots) since the Reformation." Yet the seemingly massive exception of the American "offshoot" really does seem to pose insurmountable problems, which Bruce tries heroically to confront. He asserts that, all appearances to the contrary, the United States has experienced secularization on European lines. In order to prove this, he makes some statements that initially sound outrageous: "there is ample evidence of Christianity in the USA losing power, prestige and popularity"; "there has been no significant reversal of the major trend of religion becoming marginal to the operation of the social system"; and what differences do exist can be explained in ways consistent with the secularization paradigm. "The mainstream Christian churches are declining in popularity, and the conservative Protestant churches are losing their doctrinal and behavioral distinctiveness."
Bruce makes the best case possible for what is probably an unwinnable argument. For instance, he reasonably points to recent debates over statistics for church attendance in the United States, contending that sociologists like Andrew Greeley have uncritically accepted self-report data: in reality, fewer Americans go to church regularly than they claim. Yet having said this, his thesis really cannot be sustained because of a repeated failure to ask the crucial historical question, "compared to what?"
The more we look at American history, we can see that throughout the 19th century especially, religion was strongly characterized by the kind of "privatization, individualism, and relativism" that he regards as potent new forces emerging only in recent years. Comparing American religion in 2002 with, say, 1852, many of us would be struck by the growth of religious practice and church membership over that period, and the consistency of small sects and cult-like movements that reflect a high degree of privatized and individual faith.
Indeed, if we were to look in detail at the religious backgrounds of Americans serving on either side in the Civil War, we might be surprised how few of them had any formal affiliation with regular churches, as opposed to a general commitment to Christianity and the Bible (often interpreted very idiosyncratically). A great many would also at some stage in their lives have passed through some kind of fringe or esoteric group, or spent time in religious communes. (They would have felt so at home in California circa 1975.) In the United States, and especially in some regions, the "fringe" has often been more like a mainstream.
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