Will Herberg's classic book Protestant, Catholic, Jew was published in 1956 and offered, a sober response to those who hailed a rise in religious behavior in midcentury America. In his introduction Herberg cites evidence that at the time discouraged more-sanguine outlooks on the revival of religious fervor in the United States:

In the five years from 1949 to 1953 the distribution of Scripture in the United States increased 140 per cent, reaching an all-time high of 9,726, 391 volumes a year. People were apparently buying and distributing the Bible at an unprecedented rate. Furthermore, over four-fifths of adult Americans said they believed the Bible to be the "revealed word of God," rather than merely a."great piece of literature." Yet when these same Americans were asked to give the "names of the first four books of the New Testament of the Bible, that is, the first...