The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics By Geoffrey Layman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. 435p. $49.50 cloth, $22.50 paper.

Abstract

Analysts of religion and American politics have been awaiting this book for some time. In The Great Divide, Geoffrey Layman brings together two strands of research in American political behavior in an elegant, systematic fashion: the study of party system change (often described as the literature on “party realignment”) and the analysis of religion in politics in the United States (long something of an esoteric speciality within political science). While Layman is not first to address the connection between the pew and the precinct, his impressive effort is at this point the authoritative source on religion and contemporary party politics.