The "question of American unity is as important as any question Americans currently are facing," says the author. Despite media reports and commentary about a divided America, citizens of the United States have much more in their traditions and values that unites them than divides them. They recall the harmful divisions and disunity of their 19th century Civil War, as well as some violent confrontations among religious factions in the early 20th century. Whatever political, religious, and social disagreements may exist today, they do not come close to depths of those events. "Indeed," the writer concludes, "there is every reason to believe that the polarization Americans witnessed in 2004 is likely to give rise to counter movements designed to remind Americans that for all their political differences, they share national citizenship in common."

Several years ago in my book One Nation, After All, I argued that despite media reports about divisions in American society, much more ties us together as a nation than tears us apart. Yes, I acknowledged, there are significant differences of opinion on a number of political and social issues confronting the American public. (There always have been.) But the deeply held values of individualism and self-expression are powerful magnets that continually pull Americans together. These values are much stronger than the polarizing issues of the day that sometimes repel us, one from another.

CATEGORIES OF DIVISION

In considering the last two presidential elections in the United States, many pundits, journalists, and political observers contend the country appears to be deeply divided. The 2000 election resulted in a virtual tie, with each candidate receiving a nearly identical vote in the Electoral College. In 2004, President George Bush obtained a clear majority of both the popular and the electoral votes. (The president received almost 3.4 million more popular votes than Senator John Kerry, a margin of 2.8 percent, and he won the all-deciding Electoral College vote 286 to 252.) Yet the political map of the country changed relatively little between the two campaigns; there still exist "blue" states along the coasts that lean in a liberal direction and "red" states in the South and West that tilt more conservatively.

The first years of the 21st century have been marked by continuing American differences in a variety of arenas, including religion, race, gender, geography, and world views. While overt theological disputes between religions have all but disappeared in American public life, debates within religious traditions over social issues and perceptions of the outside world remain. Whereas once the primary racial division in the United States was between blacks and whites, we now have growing populations of Hispanics and Asian Americans, as well as significant numbers of people who, in identifying themselves as multiracial, are not claiming membership in any one racial category. Men and women also often look at the world differently, so candidates for office shape their messages to appeal to one side or the other of what is commonly called the gender gap.

Geographic differences may not be as pronounced as they were during the Civil War, but, as America's election results confirm, they persist. Most Texans (who voted for Bush by a 61 percent to 38 percent margin) hold different political views than do most Rhode Islanders (who voted for Kerry by a margin of 59 percent to 39 percent). The outsourcing of factory jobs and the decline of farming communities, as well as a growing service sector and booming exurbs, testify to the persistence of economic differences; some Americans struggle to survive while others enjoy the best that a wealthy and productive society has to offer. Clearly, there are many "Americas" in America today.

A significant number of scholars share this perception that the United States is a deeply divided country. The most articulate may be the distinguished historian Gertrude Himmelfarb. Her book, One Nation, Two Cultures (1999), argues that Americans are still living in the aftermath of the cultural divide that first appeared in the 1960s. One of America's two cultures, according to Himmelfarb, values individual freedom and self-expression, and wants to move beyond the more traditional societal roles and mores prevalent in American society in the first half of the 20th century. The other places a premium on authority and respect for rules and traditions, and wants to see a return to an era in which parents had more control over their children and more people were proud of their country and sincere in their religious devotion. Himmelfarb, a conservative, clearly identifies with the latter of these two cultures. But one can find similar arguments from writers on the left who feel that such liberal values as secularism and self-expression are under threat from the right and who seek to defend the gains of the 1960s as thoroughly as they can.

To some degree, Himmelfarb, as the title of her book suggests, was reacting against my own contribution to the debate in One Nation, After All. Political activists tend to be engaged in a culture war with each other, I argued, but most Americans share common values. They may disagree on issues of the day—in a democracy, people are expected to disagree—but in contrast to the 1960s, let alone to the era of the Civil War, they are in surprising agreement. They appreciate the gains of individual freedom that are a by-product of the cultural upheavals of the 1960s, and, in that sense, Himmelfarb is correct to insist on the importance of that decade. But their feelings about those gains are often ambivalent: They frequently wonder whether the United States has gone so far in its individualism that it no longer respects authority and tradition, and they generally want politicians to get along and find common solutions to the country's problems.

The question of American unity is as important as any question Americans currently are facing. The United States, after all, has already experienced a Civil War whose costs in bloodshed have never been forgotten. However deep our current divisions may be, they certainly do not plumb to those depths. And, as the experience of the Civil War reminds us, division and disunity are harmful both to Americans themselves and to others who look to the United States for leadership. Surely we owe it to both groups to look beyond the headlines to find out whether there continue to be viable beliefs and practices that hold Americans together.

CHURCH AND STATE

Of all the presumed divisions in American life, one in particular stands out as especially significant. The fault line in America, we are frequently told, is religious in nature, gathering all those who believe strongly in God, whatever the God in which they believe, on one side, and those who do not see the hand of the divinity guiding all human action on the other. If it turns out to be the case, however, that religion in America is as much a source of unity as it is of division, then the prospects for e pluribus unum are significantly enhanced.

Many of America's founders believed that a common morality required a common religion. Yet because the United States committed itself to separation of church and state and to religious freedom in the First Amendment to its Constitution, there has never been a common religion in the United States, at least not in a formal sense. Still, the great majority of Americans at the time of our founding were Protestant, so that, despite the large number of Protestant sects, they at least shared the ideas of the Reformation in common.

Any hopes that an unofficial source of unity could be found in widespread adherence to Protestantism, however, were dashed by the arrival of huge numbers of immigrants from non-Protestant backgrounds during the 19th and early 20th centuries. So powerful were the tensions between faiths that a genuine culture war—far more violent and divisive than the one presumably taking place today—broke out in cities such as Boston between native-born Protestants and Catholic immigrants from Ireland and other countries, resulting in significant loss of life and property. Yet over time, a relatively peaceful solution to inter-religious conflict was found. Although the various denominations of Christians had never shown much unity among themselves, the United States by the mid-20th century had started calling itself a "Judeo-Christian" society, united by the fact that its three major faiths shared at least one holy text, the Hebrew Bible.

Originally meant as a term of inclusion, Judeo-Christian appears now as a term of exclusion, since it does not embrace Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and numerous other faiths brought to America after the far-reaching Immigration and Nationalty Act of 1965 ended quotas that had favored newcomers from Europe. So diverse is the United States today that we lack a term to describe ourselves. Some have proposed "Abrahamic," which does include Muslims, but at the same time it excludes the Eastern religions. There has probably never been a society with as many religions flourishing at the same time as the United States today, and it can all, in a sense, be traced back to the decision made by America's founders to encourage religious liberty.

A COMMON CULTURE?

In the face of so much diversity, some have begun to argue that Americans lack a common culture and, as a result, face the prospect of significant disunity. This was the message of Who Are We?, a book published in 2004 by the Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington. Focusing primarily on Mexican Americans, many of whom arrive with Catholic backgrounds, Huntington insisted on the importance of a common culture shaped by Anglo-Protestantism to which immigrants ought to adhere. Huntington did not focus on religion per se as a source of disunity but rather on the kinds of culture that are shaped by different religious traditions. Still, his book evoked earlier periods in American history when fears of diversity led writers to conclude that unless the United States found a way to solve the problem of having too many competing cultures, its future could not be assured.

There is no doubting the fact of religious diversity in America. But there is reason to doubt the conclusion that diversity is the source of disunity. For despite the fact that Americans are organized into a bewildering variety of denominations and traditions, American culture acts as a powerful force shaping all of its religions. In recent years, scholars have begun to focus not only on the texts and creeds of America's religions, but also on the actual ways in which ordinary people experience their faith. And one of the conclusions that emerges from this research is that as different as religions can be from each other, people often practice their faith in remarkably similar ways.

Americans, for example, frequently prefer religions that speak to them personally. They distrust distant authority—and in some cases even local authorities. They generally turn to religion for emotional rather than intellectual reasons; sacred texts are not for them documents meant to be examined for their compelling ideas, but rather are sources of guidance for how to lead their lives in difficult times. Religion gives them a strong sense of right and wrong, but it frequently is willing to forgive people for their sins and to offer them second chances. Through their faith, Americans typically experience feelings of self-empowerment and confidence. Their religion teaches them truths, but it also offers love. Americans sometimes switch faiths in their search for a religion that offers them a sense of authenticity. Religion for them does not imply some kind of hidebound commitment to tradition, but is rather an ever-changing, innovative, and dynamic way of adapting to a complex world.

Because Americans experience different religions in often remarkably similar ways, faith can serve as an important source of unity. People do not have to agree about who God is or what God does; it is enough for them that other people try to find ways of belief that fit their own needs. So powerful are these common ways of practicing religion that even recent immigrants quickly adapt the faiths of their homelands to American realities. In the 19th century, Catholics and Jews developed American versions of their religions. Now Muslims and Hindus are doing the exact same thing.

GETTING TO KNOW ONE ANOTHER

As religion goes, so go other aspects of American life. Experience makes possible commonalities even in the face of difference. The more white Americans get to know non-white Americans in their workplaces, the greater the decline of racism. The more that children marry persons from backgrounds other than their own, the more quickly the divisions that bedeviled the generations of their parents and grandparents disappear. It is true that many southerners and northerners may not agree on politics, but their lifestyles are remarkably similar; they drive the same kinds of cars to the same kinds of shopping malls to purchase the same kinds of products. For all the talk of blue and red America, a person can be put down anywhere in either part of the country and find everything remarkably familiar — even too familiar.

Indeed, there is every reason to believe that the polarization Americans witnessed in 2004 is likely to give rise to countermovements designed to remind Americans that for all their political differences, they share national citizenship in common. Polarization does pay obvious political dividends, especially to partisans who rally their troops by insisting on the nefarious designs of those on the other side of the ideological divide. Yet in politics, at least in a successful democratic political system, every reaction is eventually met by a counter reaction. United by common practices in religion and by common experiences in other aspects of life, Americans, I believe, will reach the point when they will question whether other Americans with whom they have political disagreements ought to be treated as if their views render them beyond the pale.

As they do this, I am confident they will conclude that we are one nation, after all. American individualism and our quest for self-discovery trump our differences. As long as we remember that all of us are shaped by a common American culture, we will continue to build the bridges, as we have so often in our history, that connect and hold us together.

Alan Wolfe is professor of political science and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and Public Life at Boston (Massachusetts) College. His books include One Nation, After All (1998) and The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith (2003).

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.