In late June, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a comprehensive study on the religious beliefs and practices of 35,000 Americans that provides some remarkable findings about the role of religion in the United States. Instead of a blatantly “secular America” hostile to religion, the Pew survey reveals what many of us have long known: the overwhelming majority of Americans take faith commitments seriously, but they are not dogmatic about their own religion. The seemingly contradictory findings are uniquely American in nature and reflect an abhorrence, a disdain even, of zealous “true believers.”

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)