It brings wealth and liberty, which they love, as well as materialism and individualism, which they fear. When government prestige is high, Americans look to it to provide the sense of common purpose that the market does not. But over the past two decades, many of the social programs meant to temper market inequality have been judged to be wasteful and counterproductive. Religion, by contrast, seems to offer a principled critique of the narcissism and rootlessness of contemporary America. Polling by Princeton University sociologist Robert Wuthnow shows that the Americans most bothered by society's materialism and lack of community are also the ones most likely to attend church regularly.
Churches get things done because they generate, in the think tank-speak of the day, social capital.
They possess the moral authority to call people to service on behalf of others, something politicians generally lack the stature even to try. Americans, Everett Carll Ladd of the Roper Center writes in the Ladd Report, are more than twice as likely to volunteer as people in Germany or France. Andrew Greeley, a Roman Catholic priest and professor of social science at the University of Chicago, argues that these high rates stem largely from America's religiosity. Americans who attend religious services weekly are twice as likely to volunteer their help as those who attend barely at all. One-third of the people who volunteer for even purely secular causes cite religious conviction as their motive.