The answer to each is by no means obvious or straightforward, and in many ways the answers are intertwined. In each case we have to confront stereotypes and conventional wisdom that may not accurately describe the phenomena we are treating. Insofar as the several denominations in America have had vigorous histories and have managed to secure a powerful hold in public life and in the enlistment of millions of members, it is not surprising that this should be the case.
Denominations are a massive feature of religious life in America.
This fact, however, makes it difficult for us to see religion in broader terms as a general aspect of culture or as an element in the totality of the life of a particular community, society, or ethnic group. Americans are also strongly disposed to see religious behavior in ethical-pietistic terms rather than in the assent to a set of assumptions about the structure of the cosmos or our place within it. Many professional interpreters of religion in the Twentieth Century have urged a different view of religion. Theologians, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians and others have recognized that religion often has an effect upon society and individuals that is different from the requirements of the denominations. Scholars such as Peter Berger, Paul Tillich, Robert Bellah, and Clifford Geertz argue that along with the denominational forms of religion there are elements of religion that are associated with the world-view endorsed by a people and that these elements may be found in a symbolic structure that only partially coinheres in the apparatus of the denominations.