AltaMira Press
Pages: 272
Trim: 6 x 9
978-0-7619-9196-0 • Paperback • November 1997 • $52.00 • (£40.00)
978-0-585-18987-1 • eBook • January 2000 • $49.00 • (£38.00)
Penny Edgell: Cornell University
Nancy L. Eiesland: Emory University
chapter 1 Penny Edgell Becker and Nancy L. Eiesland, Introduction
chapter 2 1. Shoshanah Feher, Managing Strain, Contradictions, and Fluidity: Messianic Judaism and the Negotiation of a Religio-Ethnic Identity
chapter 3 2. Matthew Lawson, Struggles for Mutual Reverence: Social Strategies and Religious Stories
chapter 4 3. Edward R. Gray and Scott L. Thumma, The Gospel Hour: Liminality, Identity, and Religion in a Gay Bar
chapter 5 4. Janet Stocks, To Stay or to Leave?: Organizational Legitimacy in the Struggle for Change Among Evangelical Feminists
chapter 6 5. Penny Edgell Becker, What is Right? What is Caring? Moral Logic in Local Religious Life
chapter 7 6. Elfriede Wedam, Splitting Interests or Common Causes: Styles of Moral Reasoning in Opposing Abortion
chapter 8 7. Tim Nelson, The Church and the Street: Race, Class, and Congregation
chapter 9 8. Nancy L. Eiesland, Contending with a Giant: The Impact of a Megachurch on Exurban Religious Institutions
chapter 10 9. Mike McMullen, The Religious Construction of a Global Identity: An Ethnographic Look at the Atlanta Bahai Community
chapter 11 Robert Wuthnow, Conclusion
chapter 12 References
chapter 13 Index
Contemporary American Religion is an ambitious anthology that, among its other aims, makes a compelling case for the importance of ethnographic research in the study of religious communities....This volume exhibits a keen sensitivity to religious transformation in America complemented by an awareness of changing scholarly conceptions of theory, ethnography, and cultural analysis.
— John P. Bartkowski, University of Texas at San Antonio; Review of Religious Research
Although many readers may finish this collection by agreeing with R. Wuthnow that 'ethnography is itself a highly diverse set of techniques and practices,' all will have been treated to an interesting, indeed fascinating 'read.' This is a book that could well be used as a discussion resource in college-level classes on American religion.
— John T. Ford, (Catholic University of America); Religious Studies Review
These essays...demonstrate the range of approaches—qualitative and quantitative, interview and archival—that characterize ethnographic research. The result is an anthology with all the descriptive richness and multiplicity of postmodern scholarship. But these essays successfully avoid the postmodern pitfall of neglecting theory building. With the help of the editors' useful introduction and Wuthnow's challenging conclusion, they work well together to question existing models of American religious life, suggest new ones and further the restructuring of the field.
— Bret E. Carroll, (California State University, Stanislaus); Nova Religio: The Journal Of Alternative And Emergent Religions