Christopher Chapp's Religious Rhetoric and American Politics is a worthy read, and would make an ideal text for undergraduate courses on religion and American politics. The book's strength lies in its overview of a diverse set of literatures in making a case about the continuing effect of religious rhetoric on American elections. Drawing on a diverse set of data sources, Chapp weaves a readable narrative about the history and contemporary use of civil religion themes as an identity touchstone for millions of Americans. Students of political campaigns will find much to enjoy about the text; this is one of just a few books that makes a case for a religious effect in American presidential campaigns across administrations and contexts. Chapp also explores three broad candidate uses of religious rhetoric — civil religion, culture wars, and sub-group identity — in a comparative format. As such, the book will be especially useful for encouraging discussion in introductory courses such as political behavior, religion and politics, and political communication.

There are, however, a few limitations with the work. In fact, its drawbacks are themselves related to the book's strengths. Chapp generally does not delve deeply into the available data and literature to make more complete and thorough arguments. For example, given the number of historical references on which Chapp draws in his narrative, his justification for examining religious rhetoric between 1980 and 2008 (sometimes the period ends at 2004), and his omission of the 1972 and 1976 elections (for example) is curious, especially given the nature of the Democratic campaigns featured in those two cycles. Arguably, the book's analytical time period should extend at least as far back as 1956, given the author's discussion of President Eisenhower's 1954 push to have “under God” inserted in the pledge of allegiance. Available American National Election Studies (ANES) data extend back to 1948, so assessing the use of civil religion over a longer time period seems feasible, and would have enriched the book's overall contribution considerably.

From a methodological standpoint, use of ANES and experimental data is one of the book's strengths. Unfortunately, Chapp glosses over the difficulties in estimating direct causal effects from observational and experimental data. The latter is clearly superior for the task, but in his hypothesis testing Chapp treats his observational and experimental results as essentially the same. This seems to reflect Chapp's lack of engagement with the developing experimental design literature in religion and politics. As such, readers will need to take care in evaluating Chapp's findings and analysis for the possibility of omission bias when engaging arguments across the various literatures he cites. With regard to the presentation of statistical findings, Chapp's lack of explanation as to why civil religious rhetoric affects different sub-groups of Americans differently leaves the reader with several lingering questions. The most obvious of these is why, given the broad appeal of the civil religion mechanism, a disparate effect on groups should be expected. Chapp generally stays away from this discussion, which also prevents him from engaging the experimental design literature in the religion and politics sub-field on the effects of candidate religious appeals to targeted constituencies.

There are also a few figures where a pronounced disconnect exists between what Chapp explains in the text and what his figures actually tell the reader. This is especially true for the material in Chapter Four, where the effects of emotive appeals used by various presidential candidates appear to be exaggerated in the textual explanation versus what the graph illustrates. The decision to present all findings as line graphs is also curious, not to mention limiting, in terms of information about the statistical results presented. A related problem is that much of the material a reader might wish to consult for deeper understanding and assessment of the author's analysis is located in an online appendix. While appendices are becoming more common, one wonders why more material could not have been included in the actual text (given its relatively short length).

Despite these drawbacks, Chapp has offered a readable text that examines an important topic in a new way. The questions left unanswered by his analysis present a useful opportunity for scholars to continue the consideration of religious rhetoric in political campaigns — now with a stronger basis for distinction between use of civil religion, culture war, and sub-group based rhetoric.