Parishes are the missing middle in studies of American Catholicism. Between individual Catholics and a global institution, the thousands of local parishes are where Catholicism gets remade. American Parishes showcases what social forces shape parishes, what parishes do, how they do it, and what this says about the future of Catholicism in the United States. Expounding an embedded field approach, this book displays the numerous forces currently reshaping American parishes. It draws from sociology of religion, culture, organizations, and race to illuminate basic parish processes, like leadership and education, and ongoing parish struggles like conflict and multiculturalism. American Parishes brings together contemporary data, methods, and questions to establish a sociological re-engagement with Catholic parishes and a Catholic re-engagement with sociological analysis. Contributions by leading social scientists highlight how community, geography, and authority intersect within parishes. It illuminates and analyzes how growing racial diversity, an aging religious population, and neighborhood change affect the inner workings of parishes. Contributors: Gary J. Adler Jr., Nancy Ammerman, Mary Jo Bane, Tricia C. Bruce, John A. Coleman, S.J., Kathleen Garces-Foley, Mary Gray, Brett Hoover, Courtney Ann Irby, Tia Noelle Pratt, and Brian Starks

Parishes are the missing middle in studies of American Catholicism. Between individual Catholics and a global institution, the thousands of local parishes are where Catholicism gets remade. American Parishes showcases what social forces shape parishes, what parishes do, how they do it, and what this says about the future of Catholicism in the United States. Expounding an embedded field approach, this book displays the numerous forces currently reshaping American parishes. It draws from sociology of religion, culture, organizations, and race to illuminate basic parish processes, like leadership and education, and ongoing parish struggles like conflict and multiculturalism. American Parishes brings together contemporary data, methods, and questions to establish a sociological re-engagement with Catholic parishes and a Catholic re-engagement with sociological analysis. Contributions by leading social scientists highlight how community, geography, and authority intersect within parishes. It illuminates and analyzes how growing racial diversity, an aging religious population, and neighborhood change affect the inner workings of parishes. Contributors: Gary J. Adler Jr., Nancy Ammerman, Mary Jo Bane, Tricia C. Bruce, John A. Coleman, S.J., Kathleen Garces-Foley, Mary Gray, Brett Hoover, Courtney Ann Irby, Tia Noelle Pratt, and Brian Starks

"The best study of congregations to have appeared in the last seventy years." --Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University "A path-breaking study of the way in which churches adapt, or fail to adapt, to changes in their environment. This definitive study should be read both by people active in church work and by academics interested in religion in a changing American society." --Peter L. Berger, Boston University "Those who want to understand how Americans really deal with the vast changes sweeping our country, those who care deeply about the future of churches, synagogues, and other local religious gatherings, and those who want to contribute to our society's increasingly complex efforts to build life-giving communities must come to terms with the discoveries of Nancy Ammerman and her research team . . . Bravo " --James P. Wind, president, Alban Institute "The first comprehensive examination of the relationship between rapid community change and local church life since the 1930s. This is the sociology of religion at its best, combined with refreshing reflection on the prospects and possibilities of local faith communities." --William McKinney, president, Pacific School of Religion Change--in population, economy, and culture--is sweeping through American communities. Corner groceries are stocking new foods. New roads are being built and Main Streets abandoned. Schools have come and gone, and old friends move away as strangers arrive. But in every community, no matter how volatile, religious institutions provide for their members places of moral guidance and spiritual nurture, civic participation, and identity. How do congregations react to significant communitiy change? Why do some religious institutions decline in the face of racial integration while other adapt and grow? How do congregations make sense of economic distress? Do they provide havens from community upheaval or are they vehicles for change? Congregations and Community is the most comprehensive study to date of congregations in the face of community transformation. Nancy Ammerman and her colleagues include stories of over twenty congregations in nine communities from across the nation, communities with new immigrant populations, growing groups of gays and lesbians, rapid suburbanization, and economic dislocations. With almost half of the nation's population attending religious services each week, it is impossible to understand change in American society without a close look at congregations. Congregations and Community will exist as a standard resource for years to come, and clergy, academics, and general readers alike will benefit from its insights. Nancy Tatom Ammerman is a professor of the sociology religion at Hartford Seminary. She is the author of several books, including Baptist Battles and Bible Believers (both available from Rutgers University Press). The reserch for this book was supported by a grant from the Lilly Endowment.

Winner, 1992 Distinguished Book Award, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion "With unbending fairness, Ammerman provides a historical and sociological context to unfold the historical events and issues that have dramatically changed the shape of Southern Baptists. A benchmark study of a religious body in conflict, this work is a leading authority on the present status of Southern Baptists."--Religious Studies Review "Nancy Ammerman knows . . . of the value and worth of the lives of people who operate in intact biblical-literal cultures. . . . She takes their conflicts seriously and tells us, without hitting us over the head, that we will have them all wrong--to our peril--if we do not listen. . . . Her narrative style is brisk, purposeful, and unadorned."--Martin E. Marty, University of Chicago "If only this sociological evaluation of Southern Baptist life could sell five million copies---Rutgers would be astonished, Ammerman would be basking at Club Med in Phuket, and I would be ecstatic. . . . Every movement conservative in the Southern Baptist fellowship should purchase two copies of this book."--Paige Patterson, President, Southeastern Theological Seminary, in Christianity Today "Ammerman explores the hurts and aspirations of both sides so evenhandedly that it may be difficult for all but the most die-hard partisans to guess which side is going to get the better seats in heaven."--The Christian Century "Analyzes fully the processes of the Fundamentalist takeover and their struggles as they begin to govern. Probably the best study available."--Choice "A splendid account of a decade of controversy. This readable volume surely ranks as the indispensable contemporary sociohistorical introduction to Southern Baptists."-- The Journal of Religion Nancy Tatom Ammerman is an associate professor of the sociology of religion at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University and the author of Bible Believers: Fundamentalists in the Modern World, and Congregation and Community: Sacred Spaces in Changing Urban Regions, both from Rutgers University Press.