Lacorne applauds the American ideal of a “faith-friendly secularism”, in which people of all faiths can feel welcome. Or, for that matter, people of no faith: he notes that Mr Obama’s inaugural address was the first ever to acknowledge that some Americans do not believe in God.

A review of Religion in America: A Political History (Religion, Culture, and Public Life, Columbia University Press, June 2011 by Denis Lacorne*

The astonishing battle over fiscal policy that has raged in Washington these past months, bringing the US to the brink of default, is a quarrel about the proper role of the state. But its intensity is impossible to understand unless you recognise that deeper values are also in contention.

At a critical point in last week’s talks, members of the GOP delegation from
South Carolina left to seek guidance. They repaired to a chapel to pray.

The fight has not been about politics alone. It is also a clash of values – world views whose adherents, lately, have no regard for each other. Religion is undoubtedly part of the mix.

Since its sweeping victory in last year’s elections, the Tea Party insurgency has radicalised Republicans in Congress. Many of the newcomers are social conservatives, and many of those are visibly and zealously religious. The rise of the Tea Party has widened the cultural gap between Republicans and the more secular or quietly religious Democrats.

This makes Religion in America timely, even though its approach to the subject is oblique. Denis Lacorne stands in a long line of French scholars who have looked at the US in all its strangeness and tried to make sense of it – and his book is a dual history. It aims to understand the role religion has played in the development of America’s idea of itself, and to do that partly by examining what French commentators “from Voltaire and Tocqueville to Sartre and Bernard-Henri Lévy” have made of it all.

Perhaps that seems too complicated or academic a purpose for the general reader. It turns out to work superbly.

Lacorne is an acute yet friendly observer of US politics and culture. The parts of the book that form a straightforward essay on religion in America are wise, sympathetic, and vividly written. But his weaving of this account into the story of France’s long obsession with America is fascinating in its own right, and casts light on the larger theme.

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*Denis Lacorne is a Sciences Po graduate who holds a PhD in Political Science at Yale. He is Director of Studies at the Graduate School of Sciences Po. (Sciences Po is a French university specializing in selective and diverse human and social sciences; they devote 40% of its budget to research.) He is considered one of the best European observers of American politics and culture.

Clive Crook is the Financial Times, a London based newspaper, chief Washington commentator.