Passing the Plate shows that few American Christians donate generously to religious and charitable causes -- a parsimony that seriously undermines the work of churches and ministries. Far from the 10 percent of one's income that tithing requires, American Christians' financial giving typically amounts, by some measures, to less than one percent of annual earnings. And a startling one out of five self-identified Christians gives nothing at all.
This eye-opening book explores the reasons behind such ungenerous giving, the potential world-changing benefits of greater financial giving, and what can be done to improve matters. If American Christians gave more generously, say the authors, any number of worthy projects -- from the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS to the promotion of inter-religious understanding to the upgrading of world missions -- could be funded at astounding levels. Analyzing a wide range of social surveys and government and denominational statistical datasets and drawing on in-depth interviews with Christian pastors and church members in seven different states, the book identifies a crucial set of factors that appear to depress religious financial support -- among them the powerful allure of a mass-consumerist culture and its impact on Americans' priorities, parishioners' suspicions of waste and abuse by nonprofit administrators, clergy's hesitations to boldly ask for money, and the lack of structure and routine in the way most American Christians give away money. In their conclusion, the authors suggest practical steps that clergy and lay leaders might take to counteract these tendencies and better educate their congregations about the transformative effects of generous giving.
By illuminating the social and psychological forces that shape charitable giving, Passing the Plate is sure to spark a much-needed debate on a critical issue that is of much interest to church-goers, religious leaders, philanthropists, and social scientists.

A woman is incomplete without a man, motherhood is a woman's destiny, and a woman's place is in the home. These conservative political themes are woven throughout teen romance fiction's sagas of hearts and flowers. Using the theory and interpretive methods of feminism and cultural studies, Christian-Smith explores the contradictory role that popular culture plays in constructing gender, class, race, age and sexual meanings. Originally published in 1990, Becoming a Woman through Romance combines close textual analyses of thirty-four teen romance novels (written in the United States from 1942-1982) with a school study in three midwestern American schools. Christian-Smith situates teen romance fiction within the rapidly changing publishing industry and the important political and economic changes in the United States surrounding the rise of the New Right. By analysing the structure of the novels in terms of the themes of romance, sexuality and beautification, and the Good/Bad and Strong/Weak dichotomies, she demonstrates how each has shaped the novels' versions of femininity over forty years. She also shows that although romance fiction is presented as a universal model, it is actually an expression of white middle class gender ideology and tension within this class. This high readable, comprehensive and coherent work was the first to combine in one volume three vital areas of cultural studies research: the political economy of publishing, textual analysis, and a study of readers. The first full-scale study of teen romance fiction, Becoming a Woman through Romance establishes the importance of the study of popular culture forms found in school for understanding the process of school materials in identity formation.

In innumerable discussions and activities dedicated to better understanding and helping teenagers, one aspect of teenage life is curiously overlooked. Very few such efforts pay serious attention to the role of religion and spirituality in the lives of American adolescents. But many teenagers are very involved in religion. Surveys reveal that 35% attend religious services weekly and another 15% attend at least monthly. 60% say that religious faith is important in their lives. 40% report that they pray daily. 25% say that they have been "born again." Teenagers feel good about the congregations they belong to. Some say that faith provides them with guidance and resources for knowing how to live well. What is going on in the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers? What do they actually believe? What religious practices do they engage in? Do they expect to remain loyal to the faith of their parents? Or are they abandoning traditional religious institutions in search of a new, more authentic "spirituality"? This book attempts to answer these and related questions as definitively as possible. It reports the findings of The National Study of Youth and Religion, the largest and most detailed such study ever undertaken. The NYSR conducted a nationwide telephone survey of teens and significant caregivers, as well as nearly 300 in-depth face-to-face interviews with a sample of the population that was surveyed. The results show that religion and spirituality are indeed very significant in the lives of many American teenagers. Among many other discoveries, they find that teenagers are far more influenced by the religious beliefs and practices of their parents and caregivers than commonly thought. They refute the conventional wisdom that teens are "spiritual but not religious." And they confirm that greater religiosity is significantly associated with more positive adolescent life outcomes. This eagerly-awaited volume not only provides an unprecedented understanding of adolescent religion and spirituality but, because teenagers serve as bellwethers for possible future trends, it affords an important and distinctive window through which to observe and assess the current state and future direction of American religion as a whole.

A woman is incomplete without a man, motherhood is a woman's destiny, and a woman's place is in the home. These conservative political themes are woven throughout teen romance fiction's sagas of hearts and flowers. Using the theory and interpretive methods of feminism and cultural studies, Christian-Smith explores the contradictory role that popular culture plays in constructing gender, class, race, age and sexual meanings. Originally published in 1990, Becoming a Woman through Romance combines close textual analyses of thirty-four teen romance novels (written in the United States from 1942-1982) with a school study in three midwestern American schools. Christian-Smith situates teen romance fiction within the rapidly changing publishing industry and the important political and economic changes in the United States surrounding the rise of the New Right. By analysing the structure of the novels in terms of the themes of romance, sexuality and beautification, and the Good/Bad and Strong/Weak dichotomies, she demonstrates how each has shaped the novels' versions of femininity over forty years. She also shows that although romance fiction is presented as a universal model, it is actually an expression of white middle class gender ideology and tension within this class. This high readable, comprehensive and coherent work was the first to combine in one volume three vital areas of cultural studies research: the political economy of publishing, textual analysis, and a study of readers. The first full-scale study of teen romance fiction, Becoming a Woman through Romance establishes the importance of the study of popular culture forms found in school for understanding the process of school materials in identity formation.

Biblicism, an approach to the Bible common among some American evangelicals, emphasizes together the Bible's exclusive authority, infallibility, clarity, self-sufficiency, internal consistency, self-evident meaning, and universal applicability. Acclaimed sociologist Christian Smith argues that this approach is misguided and unable to live up to its own claims. If evangelical biblicism worked as its proponents say it should, there would not be the vast variety of interpretive differences that biblicists themselves reach when they actually read and interpret the Bible. Far from challenging the inspiration and authority of Scripture, Smith critiques a particular rendering of it, encouraging evangelicals to seek a more responsible, coherent, and defensible approach to biblical authority.
This important book has generated lively discussion and debate. The paperback edition adds a new chapter responding to the conversation that the cloth edition has sparked.

What kind of animals are human beings? And how do our visions of the human shape our theories of social action and institutions? In Moral, Believing Animals, Christian Smith advances a creative theory of human persons and culture that offers innovative, challenging answers to these and other fundamental questions in sociological, cultural, and religious theory. Smith's work is based on the assumption (unfashionable in certain circles) that human beings have an identifiable and peculiar set of capacities and proclivities that distinguishes them significantly from other animals on this planet. Smith argues that all people are at bottom believers, whose lives, actions, and institutions are constituted, motivated, and governed by narrative traditions and moral orders on which they inescapably depend. This approach - which has profound consequences for how we think about knowledge, culture, social action, institutions, religion, and the task of social sciences - will be of interest to scholars in sociology, social theory, religious and cultural studies, psychology, and anthropology.

Everyday Knowledge and Uncommon Truths: Women of the Academy is a thirteen chapter volume which draws on the life experience and varied backgrounds of academic women from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The book addresses a variety of issues pertaining to women’s home lives, education, teaching, research, writing, and activism. To provide diverse perspectives on women’s experiences of being and knowing in and outside the academy, contributors draw on a range of critical approaches derived from feminism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, critical education theory, discourse theory and analysis, narrative inquiry and life histories. Lately, there has been considerable interest by women in the academy in a discernment process involving an examination of the historically, politically and culturally situated nature of their knowledge of the world, their work in the academy and other activities in which they engage. These examinations, especially in the form of narrative inquiry, life histories and deconstructive language practices such as discourse analysis, figure prominently in breaking silences and giving voice to the many tensions that women experience in the academic workplace and other settings.

Everyday Knowledge and Uncommon Truths: Women of the Academy is a thirteen chapter volume which draws on the life experience and varied backgrounds of academic women from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The book addresses a variety of issues pertaining to women’s home lives, education, teaching, research, writing, and activism. To provide diverse perspectives on women’s experiences of being and knowing in and outside the academy, contributors draw on a range of critical approaches derived from feminism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, critical education theory, discourse theory and analysis, narrative inquiry and life histories. Lately, there has been considerable interest by women in the academy in a discernment process involving an examination of the historically, politically and culturally situated nature of their knowledge of the world, their work in the academy and other activities in which they engage. These examinations, especially in the form of narrative inquiry, life histories and deconstructive language practices such as discourse analysis, figure prominently in breaking silences and giving voice to the many tensions that women experience in the academic workplace and other settings.

Despite the crucial role of religion in most societies, religious activism remains largely uninvestigated. Based on empirical evidence, this book also addresses many theoretical issues arising in the study of social movements.

Popular fiction continues to be the object of both academic and political interest as educators seek to understand the role literacy plays in constructing the gender, class, race, ethnic, age, sexual and national subjectivites of youth. This book focuses on the role of teen romance fiction in the construction and reconstruction of femininity internationally. Developed in the United States amid the conservative political restoration of Reganism, teen romance fiction condenses and articulates the long standing fears and resentments of conservative groups regarding feminism and women's growing independence and political power. Drawing on multidisciplinary approaches from cultural studies and feminist theories, psychoanalysis, semiotics, reader research, and critical theory, these essays signal the complexity of the world wide teen romance novel phenomenon and the political character of women's literacy. The book is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students of literacy, women's studies, sociology of education and cultural studies.

First Published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor and Francis, an informa company.

Island Press has been publishing the biennial The World's Water series since 1998. In that time, it has become an institution of the water field. The Journal of the American Water Resources Association sums it up well: "The series continues to be an invaluable collection of all kinds of water-related material, ranging from concise, stand-alone chapters on important topics to numerous sections of data...a 'must have' for anyone interested in the water resource field." The latest book will include chapters on particularly timely subjects, including fracking and emerging contaminants.

Counter to popular perceptions, contemporary American sociology is and promotes a profoundly sacred project at heart, Sociology today is in fact animated by sacred impulses, driven by sacred commitments, and serves a sacred project. Sociology appears on the surface to be a secular, scientific enterprise-its founding fathers were mostly atheists. Its basic operating premises are secular and naturalistic. Sociologists today are disproportionately not religious, compared to all Americans, and often irreligious. The Sacred Project of American Sociology shows, counter-intuitively, that the secular enterprise that everyday sociology appears to be pursuing is actually not what is really going on at sociology's deepest level. Christian Smith conducts a self-reflexive, tables-turning, cultural and institutional sociology of the profession of American sociology itself, showing that this allegedly secular discipline ironically expresses Emile Durkheim's inescapable sacred, exemplifies its own versions of Marxist false consciousness, and generates a spirited reaction against Max Weber's melancholically observed disenchantment of the world. American sociology does not escape the analytical net that it casts over the rest of the ordinary world. Sociology itself is a part of that very human, very social, often very sacred and spiritual world. And sociology's ironic mis-recognition of its own sacred project leads to a variety of arguably self-destructive and distorting tendencies. This book re-asserts a vision for what sociology is most important for, in contrast with its current commitments, and calls sociologists back to a more honest, fair, and healthy vision of its purpose.

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415921058

How important is religion for young people in America today? What are the major influences on their developing spiritual lives? How do their religious beliefs and practices change as young people enter into adulthood?
Christian Smith's Souls in Transition explores these questions and many others as it tells the definitive story of the religious and spiritual lives of emerging adults, ages 18 to 24, in the U.S. today. This is the much-anticipated follow-up study to the landmark book, Soul Searching: The Religiousand Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. Based on candid interviews with thousands of young people tracked over a five-year period, Souls in Transition reveals how the religious practices of the teenagers portrayed in Soul Searching have been strengthened, challenged, and often changed as they have moved into adulthood. The book vividly describes as well the broader cultural world of today's emerging adults, how that culture shapes their religious outlooks, and what the consequences are for religious faith and practice in America more generally. Some of Smith's findings are surprising. Parents turn out to be the single most important influence on the religious outcomes in the lives of young adults. On the other hand, teenage participation in evangelization missions and youth groups does not predict a high level of religiosity just a few years later. Moreover, the common wisdom that religiosity declines sharply during the young adult years is shown to be greatly exaggerated.
Painstakingly researched and filled with remarkable findings, Souls in Transition will be essential reading for youth ministers, pastors, parents, teachers and students at church-related schools, and anyone who wishes to know how religious practice is affected by the transition into adulthood in America today.

A groundbreaking new theory of religion Religion remains an important influence in the world today, yet the social sciences are still not adequately equipped to understand and explain it. This book advances an innovative theory of religion that goes beyond the problematic theoretical paradigms of the past. Drawing on the philosophy of critical realism and personalist social theory, Christian Smith explores why humans are religious in the first place-uniquely so as a species-and offers an account of secularization and religious innovation and persistence that breaks the logjam in which religious scholarship has been stuck for so long. Certain to stimulate debate and inspire promising new avenues of scholarship, Religion features a wealth of illustrations and examples that help to make its concepts accessible to readers. This superbly written book brings sound theoretical thinking to a perennially thorny subject, and a new vitality and focus to its study.

How parents approach the task of passing on religious faith and practice to their children How do American parents pass their religion on to their children? At a time of overall decline of traditional religion and an increased interest in personal "spirituality," Religious Parenting investigates the ways that parents transmit religious beliefs, values, and practices to their kids. We know that parents are the most important influence on their children's religious lives, yet parents have been virtually ignored in previous work on religious socialization. Renowned religion scholar Christian Smith and his collaborators Bridget Ritz and Michael Rotolo explore American parents' strategies, experiences, beliefs, and anxieties regarding religious transmission through hundreds of in-depth interviews that span religious traditions, social classes, and family types all around the country. Throughout we hear the voices of evangelical, Catholic, Mormon, mainline and black Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist parents and discover that, despite massive diversity, American parents share a nearly identical approach to socializing their children religiously. For almost all, religion is important for the foundation it provides for becoming one's best self on life's difficult journey. Religion is primarily a resource for navigating the challenges of this life, not preparing for an afterlife. Parents view it as their job, not religious professionals', to ground their children in life-enhancing religious values that provide resilience, morality, and a sense of purpose. Challenging longstanding sociological and anthropological assumptions about culture, the authors demonstrate that parents of highly dissimilar backgrounds share the same "cultural models" when passing on religion to their children. Taking an extensive look into questions of religious practice and childrearing, Religious Parenting uncovers parents' real-life challenges while breaking innovative theoretical ground.

As is becoming clearer and clearer, pressures on water resources in the United States are growing, with no foreseeable end in sight. Yet these pressures are not due to a national water scarcity. While the Southwest faces the problems of draught, a rising population, and over-allocation of resources, the Northeast and Northern Plains must deal with increasingly wet weather and flooding. The greatest challenges that the United States faces with regard to water are regional disparities in availability, a changing climate, worsening water quality, and, increasingly, controversies over management strategies and policies. While many countries have adopted federal approaches to water management, the United States has no cohesive national water policy. In fact, the oversight of current water policy is shared by over sixty different agencies,and the last national water assessment undertaken in the United States occurred over forty years ago. The lack of coordinated oversight not only renders national policymakers unable to make informed analyses of water quality standards and availability, it also results in large gaps of understanding regarding variability of water resources and how to most efficiently and effectively manage and preserve those resources. A Twenty-First Century U.S. Water Policy culls together independent analysis of freshwater availability; water usage in agriculture, municipalities, tribal settlements, and energy production; exisiting legal frameworks; environmental justice movements; and data on water quality and climate change. The result is a visionary proposal for a coherent and critically needed federal water policy.

It is zero hour for a new US water policy! At a time when many countries are adopting new national approaches to water management, the United States still has no cohesive federal policy, and water-related authorities are dispersed across more than 30 agencies. Here, at last, is a vision for what we as a nation need to do to manage our most vital resource. In this book, leading thinkers at world-class water research institution the Pacific Institute present clear and readable analysis and recommendations for a new federal water policy to confront our national and global challenges at a critical time. What exactly is at stake? In the 21st century, pressures on water resources in the United States are growing and conflicts among water users are worsening. Communities continue to struggle to meet water quality standards and to ensure that safe drinking water is available for all. And new challenges are arising as climate change and extreme events worsen, new water quality threats materialize, and financial constraints grow. Yet the United States has not stepped up with adequate leadership to address these problems. The inability of national policymakers to safeguard our water makes the United States increasingly vulnerable to serious disruptions of something most of us take for granted: affordable, reliable, and safe water. This book provides an independent assessment of water issues and water management in the United States, addressing emerging and persistent water challenges from the perspectives of science, public policy, environmental justice, economics, and law. With fascinating case studies and first-person accounts of what helps and hinders good water management, this is a clear-eyed look at what we need for a 21st century U.S. water policy.

Life for emerging adults is vastly different today than it was for their counterparts even a generation ago. Young people are waiting longer to marry, to have children, and to choose a career direction. As a result, they enjoy more freedom, opportunities, and personal growth than ever before. But the transition to adulthood is also more complex, disjointed, and confusing.
In Lost in Transition, Christian Smith and his collaborators draw on 230 in-depth interviews with a broad cross-section of emerging adults (ages 18-23) to investigate the difficulties young people face today, the underlying causes of those difficulties, and the consequences both for individuals and for American society as a whole. Rampant consumer capitalism, ongoing failures in education, hyper-individualism, postmodernist moral relativism, and other aspects of American culture are all contributing to the chaotic terrain that emerging adults must cross. Smith identifies five major problems facing very many young people today: confused moral reasoning, routine intoxication, materialistic life goals, regrettable sexual experiences, and disengagement from civic and political life. The trouble does not lie only with the emerging adults or their poor individual decisions but has much deeper roots in mainstream American culture--a culture which emerging adults have largely inherited rather than created. Older adults, Smith argues, must recognize that much of the responsibility for the pain and confusion young people face lies with them. Rejecting both sky-is-falling alarmism on the one hand and complacent disregard on the other, Smith suggests the need for what he calls "realistic concern"--and a reconsideration of our cultural priorities and practices--that will help emerging adults more skillfully engage unique challenges they face.
Even-handed, engagingly written, and based on comprehensive research, Lost in Transition brings much needed attention to the darker side of the transition to adulthood.