American Parishes: Remaking Local Catholicism

by Gary J. Adler Jr. (Editor), Tricia C. Bruce (Editor), Brian Starks (Editor), Gary J. Adler Jr. (Contribution by), Nancy Ammerman (Contribution by)

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823284368
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	07/02/2019
Series:	Catholic Practice in North America
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Gary J. Adler, Jr. (Edited By)
Gary J. Adler, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Pennsylvania State University.

Tricia C. Bruce (Edited By)
Tricia C. Bruce is Associate Professor of Sociology at Maryville College and the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Brian Starks (Edited By)
Brian Starks is Associate Professor of Sociology at Kennesaw State University.


Nancy T. Ammerman is professor emerita of sociology of religion in the Sociology Department of the College of Arts and Sciences and in the School of Theology at Boston University. She is a leading voice in congregational studies and has served as president of the Society of the Scientific Study of Religion and the Association of the Sociology of Religion. Her books include Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2013), Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives (Oxford University Press, 2006), Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and their Partners (University of California Press, 2005), and Bible Believers: Fundamentalists in the Modern World (Rutgers University Press, 1987).
Mary Jo Bane is the Thornton Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Management Emerita at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research interests center on poverty and inequality and how Catholic teaching and Catholic parish life address these issues. She is the author of numerous books and articles on poverty, education, families, and welfare and once served as assistant secretary for Families and Children in the federal Department of Health and Human Services.
John A. Coleman, S.J., has been an associate pastor at Saint Ignatius Parish in San Francisco since 2009. Previously, he was the Charles Casassa Professor of Social Values at Loyola Marymount University (1997–2009); Professor of Religion and Society at the Jesuit School of Theology and the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley (1974–1997); and the Thomas More Chair, The University of Western Australia (2005 and 2007). Coleman has edited, coauthored, or authored eighteen books, including The Evolution of Dutch Catholicism, 1958-1974 (University of California Press, 1978); An American Strategic Theology (Paulist Press, 1982); One Hundred Years of Catholic Social Teaching (Orbis, 1991); and Christian Political Ethics (Princeton University Press, 2007). He has also contributed over seventy chapters to collected volumes such as Civil Society and Government (Princeton University Press, 2002); Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); The True Wealth of Nations (Oxford University Press, 2010); Modern Catholic Social Teaching (Georgetown University Press, 2018); and American Parishes: Remaking Local Catholicism (Fordham University Press, 2019).
Kathleen Garces-Foley is professor of religious studies at Marymount University. Her research interests include multiracial churches, young adults and religion, and contemporary death practices. She is the coauthor of The Twentysomething Soul: Understanding the Religious and Secular Lives of American Young Adults (Oxford University Press, 2019), author of Crossing the Ethnic Divide: The Multiethnic Church on a Mission (Oxford University Press, 2007), and editor of Death and Religion in a Changing World (Routledge, 2006).
Mark M. Gray is research associate professor and senior research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University. He has published on a wide number of topics related to Catholic parishes, religious switching, Catholic schools, and politics in two books and journals such as the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and Review of Religious Research. He has designed, led, or participated in CARA research projects including the National Survey of Catholic Parishes, Emerging Models of Pastoral Leadership, and CARA Catholic Polls.
Brett C. Hoover is associate professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He teaches pastoral theology, congregational studies, and American Catholicism at the graduate and undergraduate levels. A former Congregational Studies fellow, his research has focused on ethnographic accounts of the relationship between different cultural groups in culturally diverse Catholic parishes in the United States. He is the author of The Shared Parish: Latinos, Anglos, and the Future of U.S. Catholicism (New York University Press, 2014).
Courtney Ann Irby is assistant professor of sociology at Illinois Wesleyan University, having completed her PhD at Loyola University Chicago in the Department of Sociology. Her research considers the changing norms and meaning associated with how people form intimate relationships, including constructions of gender and sexuality. Her dissertation examined how religious groups mediate cultural changes in marriage by comparing Catholic and evangelical Protestant marriage preparation programs. Her articles have appeared in Gender & Society, Critical Research on Religion, Sociology of Religion, and Sociology Compass.
Tia Noelle Pratt is a sociologist of religion specializing in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. Specifically, she focuses on systemic racism in the US Catholic Church, African American Catholic identity, and millennial-generation Catholics. She is currently a scholar-in-residence at the Aquinas Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and President of TNPratt & Associates, LLC.

Table of Contents

Introduction: What Is a Parish? Why Look at Catholic Parishes?
Gary J. Adler Jr., Tricia C. Bruce, and Brian Starks | 1

Part I : Seeing Parishes Through a Sociological Lens

1. A Brief History of the Sociology of Parishes in the United States
Tricia C. Bruce | 25

2. Studying Parishes: Lessons and New Directions from the Study of Congregations
Nancy T. Ammerman | 47

Part II: Parish Trends

3. The Shifting Landscape of US Catholic Parishes, 1998–2012
Gary J. Adler Jr. | 69

4. Stable Transformation: Catholic Parishioners in the United States
Mark M. Gray | 95

Part III: Race, Class, and Diversity in Parish Life

5. Power in the Parish
Brett C. Hoover | 111

6. Liturgy as Identity Work in Predominantly African American Parishes
Tia Noelle Pratt | 132

7. A House Divided
Mary Jo Bane | 153

Part IV: Young Catholics In (and Out) of Parishes

8. Parishes as Homes and Hubs
Kathleen Garces-Foley | 173

9. Preparing to Say “I Do”
Courtney Ann Irby | 196

Part V : The Practice and Future of a Sociology of Catholic Parishes

10. A Sociologist Looks at His Own Parish: A Conversation with John A. Coleman, SJ
John A. Coleman, SJ, with editors Gary J. Adler Jr., Tricia C. Bruce, and Brian Starks | 217

Conclusion: Parishes as the Embedded Middle of American Catholicism
Gary J. Adler Jr., Tricia C. Bruce, and Brian Starks | 231

Acknowledgments | 247

List of Contributors | 249

Index | 253

Editorial Reviews

Led off by a very helpful introduction, the essays in this volume, while addressing various dimensions of U.S. parishes, all exhibit a firm grounding in the broader scholarly literature, plenty of sociological insights, and writing that is both accessible and engaging. This is a terrific, much-needed collection that, in my estimation, deserves a wide readership.—Jerome P. Baggett, Sense of the Faithful: How American Catholics Live Their Faith

From the Publisher

This book is an important step forward...

Catholic Books Review

The value of a book like this—one that is synthetic and balanced—shows the Church in its weakness. It also helps undercut our assumptions of the Church in the United States as either a monolith or as a set of discrete units. The authors seek to provide deep insights into the direction of the Church... The book forces us to ask hard questions when faced with some glaringly troublesome data. Do we cower or address it? Do we ask whether those in authority are somehow hindering growth by being stuck in conceptions of the Church taken from bygone eras? Are we being faithful to the Gospel by organizing ourselves into the kinds of parishes that we have, or is there a way to be better?

Catholic Library World

Led off by a very helpful introduction, the essays in this volume, while addressing various dimensions of U.S. parishes, all exhibit a firm grounding in the broader scholarly literature, plenty of sociological insights, and writing that is both accessible and engaging. This is a terrific, much-needed collection that, in my estimation, deserves a wide readership.

Sense of the Faithful: How American Catholics Live Their Faith - Jerome P. Baggett