Author: Jessica M. Barron
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479844764
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 203
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Book Description
Explores the role of race and consumer culture in attracting urban congregants to an evangelical church The Urban Church Imagined illuminates the dynamics surrounding white urban evangelical congregations’ approaches to organizational vitality and diversifying membership. Many evangelical churches are moving to urban, downtown areas to build their congregations and attract younger, millennial members. The urban environment fosters two expectations. First, a deep familiarity and reverence for popular consumer culture, and second, the presence of racial diversity. Church leaders use these ideas when they imagine what a “city church” should look like, but they must balance that with what it actually takes to make this happen. In part, racial diversity is seen as key to urban churches presenting themselves as “in touch” and “authentic.” Yet, in an effort to seduce religious consumers, church leaders often and inadvertently end up reproducing racial and economic inequality, an unexpected contradiction to their goal of inclusivity. Drawing on several years of research, Jessica M. Barron and Rhys H. Williams explore the cultural contours of one such church in downtown Chicago. They show that church leaders and congregants’ understandings of the connections between race, consumer culture, and the city is a motivating factor for many members who value interracial interactions as a part of their worship experience. But these explorations often unintentionally exclude members along racial and classed lines. Indeed, religious organizations’ efforts to engage urban environments and foster integrated congregations produce complex and dynamic relationships between their racially diverse memberships and the cultivation of a safe haven in which white, middle-class leaders can feel as though they are being a positive force in the fight for religious vitality and racial diversity. The book adds to the growing constellation of studies on urban religious organizations, as well as emerging scholarship on intersectionality and congregational characteristics in American religious life. In so doing, it offers important insights into racially diverse congregations in urban areas, a growing trend among evangelical churches. This work is an important case study on the challenges faced by modern churches and urban institutions in general.
Author: William Herbert Perry Faunce
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Theology
Languages : en
Pages : 782
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Book Description
Author: Michael Rhodes
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 1493412809
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 395
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Book Description
The church in the West is rediscovering the fact that God cares deeply for the poor. More and more, churches and individual Christians are looking for ways to practice economic discipleship, but it's hard to make progress when we are blind to our own entanglement in our culture's idolatrous economic beliefs and practices. Practicing the King's Economy cuts through much confusion and invites Christians to take their place within the biblical story of the "King Jesus Economy." Through eye-opening true stories of economic discipleship in action, and with a solid exploration of six key biblical themes, the authors offer practical ways for God's people to earn, invest, spend, compensate, save, share, and give in ways that embody God's love and provision for the world. Foreword by Christopher J. H. Wright.
Author: Harlan Paul Douglass
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Church buildings
Languages : en
Pages : 390
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Book Description
Of method, results and conclusions -- The problem of classifying churches -- A method of statistical classification -- The major types -- The evolutionary trend of the city church -- Findings and conclusions in detail -- The slightly adapted church -- Interpreting the slightly adapted church -- The unadapted church -- The internally adapted church -- The socially adapted church -- Widely variant types and the average -- General development accompanying developing programs -- Local environment and the church types -- Special heredities and larger environment -- The provisional use of trends as norms.
Author: Lowell W Livezey
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814753213
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 554
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Book Description
American cities are in the midst of fundamental changes. De-industrialization of large, aging cities has been enormously disruptive for urban communities, which are being increasingly fragmented. Though often overlooked, religious organizations are important actors, both culturally and politically in the restructuring metropolis. Public Religion and Urban Transformation provides a sweeping view of urban religion in response to these transformations. Drawing on a massive study of over seventy-five congregations in urban neighborhoods, this volume provides the most comprehensive picture available of urban places of worship-from mosques and gurdwaras to churches and synagogues-within one city. Revisiting the primary site of research for the early members of the Chicago School of urban sociology, the volume focuses on Chicago, which provides an exceptionally clear lens on the ways in which religious organizations both reflect and contribute to changes in American pluralism. From the churches of a Mexican American neighborhood and of the Black middle class to communities shared by Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Muslims and the rise of "megachurches," Public Religion and Urban Transformation illuminates the complex interactions among religion, urban structure, and social change at this extraordinary episode in the history of urban America.
Author: Kevin G. Ford
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 1514006669
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 154
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Book Description
The world has changed, and we minister in places we have never been in before. As the world screams for our focus, it's essential to become attentive to God, our congregation, and our community. Kevin Ford and Jim Singleton call for attentive churches with attentive leaders to discern cultural and organizational change and pivot accordingly.
Author: Carol B. Duncan
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554580854
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
This Spot of Ground: Spiritual Baptists in Toronto represents the first detailed exploration of an African-Caribbean religion in the context of contemporary migration to Canada. Toronto is home to Canadas largest black population, a significant portion of which comprises Caribbean migrants and their descendants. This book shows how the development of the Spiritual Baptist religion in Canada has been shaped by the immigration experiences of church members, the large majority of whom are women, and it examines the ways in which religious experiences have mediated the members’ experiences of migration and everyday life in Canada. This Spot of Ground is based on a critical ethnography, with in-depth interviews and participant observations of church services and other ritual activities, including baptism and pilgrimage and field research in Trinidad that explores the transnational linkages with Spiritual Baptists there. The book addresses theoretical and methodological issues also, including the development of perspectives suitable for examining diasporic African religious and cultural expressions characterized by transnational migration, an emphasis on oral tradition as the repository of cultural history, and linguistic and cultural hybridity. This Spot of Ground contributes new information to the study of Caribbean religion and culture in the diaspora, providing a detailed examination of the significance of religion in the immigration process and identity and community formations of Caribbean people in Canada.
Author: Heidi Rolland Unruh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195161556
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 334
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Book Description
As public funding for social services has been slashed, there has arisen an unprecedented interest in the potential (and dangers) of faith-based institutions as agents of social change. This text seeks to answer pressing questions surrounding this important and controversial issue.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Theology
Languages : en
Pages : 556
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Book Description
Author: E. Brooks Holifield
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802803814
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
In God's Ambassadors E. Brooks Holifield masterfully traces the history of America's Christian clergy from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century, analyzing the changes in practice and authority that have transformed the clerical profession. Challenging one-sided depictions of decline in clerical authority, Holifield locates the complex story of the clergy within the context not only of changing theologies but also of transitions in American culture and society. The result is a thorough social history of the profession that also takes seriously the theological presuppositions that have informed clerical activity. With alternating chapters on Protestant and Catholic clergy, the book permits sustained comparisons between the two dominant Christian traditions in American history. At the same time, God's Ambassadors depicts a vocation that has remained deeply ambivalent regarding the professional status marking the other traditional learned callings in the American workplace. Changing expectations about clerical education, as well as enduring theological questions, have engendered a debate about the professional ideal that has distinguished the clerical vocation from such fields as law and medicine. The American clergy from the past four centuries constitute a colorful, diverse cast of characters who have, in ways both obvious and obscure, helped to shape the tone of American culture. For a well-rounded narrative of their story told by a master historian, God's Ambassadors is the book to read.
