Foreigners’ Views on American Secularism: Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, and G.K. Chesterton – Prof. James Nolan

The Thomistic Institute

Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Thomism, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality, Catholicism, Philosophy, Christianity

4.8 • 873 Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2026

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

Prof. James Nolan argues that Tocqueville, Weber, and Chesterton offer contrasting foreign views on American secularism, with Tocqueville and Chesterton seeing religion as essential to democracy and predicting its persistence, while Weber views Protestantism as inevitably fueling disenchantment.

This lecture was given on March 23rd, 2026, at New York University.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Professor James L. Nolan, Jr. is the Washington Gladden 1859 Professor of Sociology at Williams College, where he has been teaching since 1996. Professor Nolan’s teaching and research interests fall within the general areas of law and society, culture, technology and social change, and historical comparative sociology. His most recent book, Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age, was published with Harvard University Press in 2020. His previous books include What They Saw in America: Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, G.K. Chesterton, and Sayyid Qutb (2016); Legal Accents, Legal Borrowing: The International Problem-Solving Court Movement (2009); Reinventing Justice: The American Drug Court Movement (2001); and The Therapeutic State: Justifying Government at Century’s End (1998). He is the recipient of several grants and awards including National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships and a Fulbright scholarship. He has held visiting fellowships at Oxford University, Loughborough University, the University of Notre Dame, Catholic University of America, and Nagasaki Junshin Catholic University.

Keywords: American Democracy, Chesterton, Disenchantment, Iron Cage, Protestant Ethic, Religion, Secularization, Second Great Awakening, Tocqueville, Weber

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tumistic Institute podcast.
0:06.0	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:12.0	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Tumistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.0	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at
0:21.7	to mystic institute.org. As Cameron mentioned, in 2016, I published a book titled
0:27.7	What They Saw in America, which compares the views of four foreign visitors who came to the United
0:33.6	States at different times in history from different countries, then went back to their
0:37.1	respective countries and wrote about what they saw.
0:41.4	And so tonight I'm going to be considering three of these visitors, Alexis de Tocqueville, Max
0:45.9	Weber, and G. K. Chesterton, and with a particular focus on their views about secularization
0:51.8	in America.
0:53.8	And I will proceed chronologically, beginning with
0:56.6	Tocqueville. And at the end, I will offer some reflections on recent discussions about
1:04.0	secularization with an eye toward the insights that are given by our outside visitors.
1:14.3	So as a concerns Tocque, and his views about religion and secularism in America, something about his biography is an important and useful
1:21.6	starting point. Tocqueville was born in 1805 into a French aristocratic family, and as one biographer put it, was raised in a thoroughly Catholic milue.
1:32.3	In his early years, he was actually tutored by a certain Abbe Lesseu, a Catholic priest who had taken refuge with the Tockville family after the French Revolution.
1:45.0	Tockville had much affection for his tutor.
1:48.0	In fact, Abbe Leshruh died while
1:51.0	Tockville was traveling around America,
1:53.0	and when he learned of it, he was grief-stricken.
1:57.0	He was really brokenhearted when he learned of his passing.
	...

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