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Religious Vitality In Christian Intentional Communities
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Book Synopsis Religious Vitality in Christian Intentional Communities by : Mark Killian
Download or read book Religious Vitality in Christian Intentional Communities written by Mark Killian and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through ethnographic research, Killian examines vitality in Philadelphia and Berea, two Christian Intentional Communities whose participants live in close proximity with one another to achieve religious values. Pulling from Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration, Killian argues that the vitality of both communities cannot be reduced to deterministic structural, individual, or organizational causes. Rather, vitality in these communities is affected by all of these causes in relationship to one another. In other words, it’s not that each explanation “matters” (e.g., social structures matter, organizational behaviors matter, individual religious choices matter), but that these explanations matter to each other (e.g., social structures matter to individual choices, individual choices matter to organizational behaviors, and social structures matter to organizational choices, etc.). To make this argument, Killian develops the idea of the vitality nexus—the interconnected relationship between the various explanations of religious vitality.
Book Synopsis Everything in Common by : Mark P. Killian
Download or read book Everything in Common written by Mark P. Killian and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although most contemporary religious organizations are experiencing decline in adherence and institutional vitality, Christian Intentional Communities (CICs), a set of Christian organizations in which participants live in close proximity so as to achieve religious values, experience growth. Research using the Fellowship of Intentional Communities' Online Directory indicates a dramatic increase in the number of CICs that have either been formed or are in formation over the last ten years. Yet researchers have not examined why CICs are growing. Therefore, this research aimed to provide an in-depth exploration of the growth and vitality of CICs. To conduct this exploration I employed a mixed methods approach utilizing a national survey of CICs, as well as participant observation and community member interviews in Philadelphia and Berea, two CICs located in a Midwestern City. Based on the National Survey of Contemporary Christian Intentional Communities, CICs generally align with one of two cultural ideologies: freewill individualism or expressive communalism. These cultural ideologies, and their accompanying behaviors, attract individuals who experience various types of alienation from American social institutions, such as the media, economic culture, political system, and, particular to CICs, religion. Once established, factors, including charismatic influence, worship service cultures, and inter-organizational cultures, strengthen CICs in terms of members' commitments. However, there are other factors that have a greater effect on members' commitments in some CICs as opposed to others. For example, in Philadelphia, a freewill individualistic community, I observed the use of ingroup-outgroup discursive repertoires, creating a cultural identity that appeared constantly under threat by outside influences. Thus, Philadelphians rallied around their subculture, strengthening adherence to the community. Furthermore, Philadelphia employed strict theological and behavioral expectations, which, as mediated through commitment mechanisms, demanded that members sacrifice desires, time, energy, and money in order to maintain their membership. Such sacrifices amounted to a substantial personal investment, which was unrecoverable if an individual was to leave Philadelphia. Additionally, although both communities benefited from resource configurations offered in the urban environment, Berea, an expressive communalist community, utilized the religio-cultural ecology of their neighborhood, creating, what I label, a "parish consciousness," in which members were completely enveloped by a place-based system of thought and action. As a result, Bereans deepened their commitment to the community by investing their time, energy, money, and desires, particularly through home purchases, to live a life predominately within their urban neighborhood (e.g. their parish). The results of this research are significant for three reasons: (1) the National Survey of Contemporary CICs provides a much needed update to the body of knowledge surrounding intentional communities; (2) ethnographic findings confirm and/or challenge the ways in which sociologists explain the strength and vitality of religious organizations; and (3) the study's outcomes offer practical information for the growth of religious organizations.
Book Synopsis Good News for Common Goods by : Wes Markofski
Download or read book Good News for Common Goods written by Wes Markofski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-24 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the relationship between evangelical Christianity and democracy in America? In Good News for Common Goods, sociologist Wes Markofski explores how multicultural evangelicals across the United States are addressing race, poverty, inequality, politics, and religious and cultural difference in America's increasingly plural and polarized public arena. Based on extensive original research on multicultural evangelicals active in faith-based community organizing, community development, political advocacy, and public service organizations across the country-including over 90 in-depth interviews with racially diverse evangelical and non-evangelical activists, community leaders, and neighborhood residents-Markofski shows how the varieties of public religion practiced by evangelical Christians are not always bad news for non-evangelicals, people of color, and those advancing ethical democracy in the United States. Markofski argues that multicultural evangelicals can and do work with others across race, class, religious, and political lines to achieve common good solutions to public problems, and that they can do so without abandoning their own distinctive convictions and identities or demanding that others do so. Just as ethical democracy calls for a more reflexive evangelicalism, it also calls for a more reflexive secularism and progressivism.
Book Synopsis Authenticity and Religion in the Pluralistic Age by : Francesca E.S. Montemaggi
Download or read book Authenticity and Religion in the Pluralistic Age written by Francesca E.S. Montemaggi and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an original concept of authenticity to illuminate the transformation of Christian consciousness in the increasingly more secular and pluralistic culture of Western societies. The present work is unique in offering an in-depth study of Simmel’s sociology and philosophy in dialogue with an ethnographic account of contemporary Christians. It develops original concepts drawing on Simmel’s writings on individuality and religion and connecting them with classical and contemporary scholarship in sociology and philosophy. The theoretical framework is illustrated through an analysis of the narratives and practices of Christians in an evangelical church in the UK and several New Monastic communities in the UK, US, and Canada. The book proposes an understanding of belief as relational and experiential and a concept of authenticity, as self-transcendence articulated in dialogue with religious tradition and the Other. Religious tradition is developed through an on-going process of interpretation and sacralization of what is considered within and without the tradition’s boundaries. The book also proposes an innovative approach to the study of morality by distinguishing between a people-centered ethic (ethic of compassion) and a norm-centered ethic (ethic of purity) to account for the the different ways in which Christians engage with the Other. This allows an exploration of the relationship between ethics and the making and breaking of boundaries in a given community. The case studies in this book show that committed Christians attempt to reconcile commitment to their tradition with the value of inclusiveness and to affirm their moral and religious identity as a distinctive moral lifestyle, not superior, but of equal worth to those of non-Christians.
Book Synopsis Religious Encounters in Transcultural Society by : David William Kim
Download or read book Religious Encounters in Transcultural Society written by David William Kim and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume focuses on the various phenomena of religious encounters in a transcultural society where religion or religious traditions play a significant role in a multi-cultural concept. Religious Encounters in Transcultural Society is divided into three parts: Islamic encounters with regional religions, East Asian religious encounters, and alternative religious encounters. This book evokes the fact that religious encounters exist in every transcultural society even though they often remain hidden behind socio-cultural issues. The situation can be changed, but one culture cannot harmoniously and always contain two or multi-beliefs. The issue of religious encounters mostly arises in the transnational process of religious globalization.
Book Synopsis Listening, Religion, and Democracy in Contemporary Boston by : William W. Young
Download or read book Listening, Religion, and Democracy in Contemporary Boston written by William W. Young and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of religious practices of listening in the Boston area. Through ethnographic study of a variety of religious communities, with an extensive focus on Quaker listening, it argues that religious practice shapes our habits of listening by creating a plurality of regimes of listening across Boston’s landscape. These practices, moreover, cultivate specific dispositions, as well as distinct patterns of religious and democratic virtues. Through these dispositions and virtues, religious listening facilitates a diverse range of forms of democratic engagement, and varied contributions to the pursuit of social justice. William Young provides an innovative interpretation of these religious practices. It argues that insofar as religious listening helps practitioners to extend and amplify their listening, and makes them more responsive to their communities, it creates a social mode of embodied receptivity and agency. Through both their listening and their actions, these groups express their conceptions of divinity, embodying divine attributes and activity within the sociopolitical realm—serving as God’s ears within the world. It is by interpreting their practices as creating modes of social discipline, reception, and agency that the book explicates the full significance of religious listening, in its adaptations and extensions of our aural capacities, and their implications for sociopolitical life.
Download or read book Deep and Wide written by Evan B. Howard and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Commitment to a life of prayer and community can prove to be a great help for those involved in politics. Rather than being distracted away from action, Evan B. Howard argues that committed Christians often find both freedom and empowerment to contribute to the greater good of the world. A review of the history of committed Christian life (monasticism) shows that devout communities have engaged in a wide range of socio-political arenas. We can explore today what nuns and monks have accomplished in the past. We can speak into political conversations. We can care for those in need. We can model new ways of ordering life together. We can take concrete political action in governmental process. We can pray. This book blends examination of history with musings about the Christian life and politics generally. It also offers a collection of monastic practices to equip communities and individuals to embody an appropriate blend of “deep” and “wide” for themselves.
Book Synopsis New Religious Movements in Modern Asian History by : David W. Kim
Download or read book New Religious Movements in Modern Asian History written by David W. Kim and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-09-30 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides evidence that the emergence of Asian new religious movements (NRMs) was predominantly the result of anti-colonial ideology from local religious groups or individuals. The contributors argue that when traditional religions were powerless to maintain their cultural heritage, the leadership of NRMs adduced alternative principles, and the new teachings of each NRM attracted the local people enough for them to change their beliefs. The contributors argue that, as a whole, the Asian new religious movements overall were very ardent and progressive in transmitting their new ideologies. The varied viewpoints in this volume attest to the consistent development of Asian NRMs from domestic and international dimensions by replacing old, traditional religions.
Book Synopsis Living in Christian Community by : Arthur G. Gish
Download or read book Living in Christian Community written by Arthur G. Gish and published by Herald Press (VA). This book was released on 1979 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Muslim and Catholic Responses to HIV and AIDS in Kenya by : Timothy James Carey
Download or read book Muslim and Catholic Responses to HIV and AIDS in Kenya written by Timothy James Carey and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-09-15 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the capital city of Nairobi, Kenya, African Catholic and Sunni Muslim leaders addressing HIV and AIDS are faced with a unique challenge. On the one hand, they are called to attend to the spiritual wellbeing of the infected individual; on the other hand, they are increasingly charged with serving as the stewards of the physical bodies of those negatively affected by such a physiologically debilitating and social stigmatized disease through certain identifiable interreligious traditions common to both faiths. This book explores this development firsthand. While conducting fieldwork in Nairobi, Carey interviewed Muslim and Catholic leaders working in three areas—HIV and AIDS prevention, education, and destigmatization. These recorded observations and accounts help to illustrate that religious officials from within African Catholicism and Sunni Islam are attempting to provide the common inter-religious traditions of mercy, hospitality, and justice in a holistic manner for those living with the virus in the city. The research that produced this book involved six weeks of fieldwork during the summer of 2014 to help fill in the interstices between anthropological, sociological, and ethnographic accounts provided by other leading academics in their respective fields. It presumed that religious traditions in Kenya exhibit a susceptibility to culture and context and a practical openness to its social environment which then affords this particular work a unique theological perspective in its attempt to identify and analyze patterns of social behavior and religious organization.
Book Synopsis Living in the Margins by : Terry A. Veling
Download or read book Living in the Margins written by Terry A. Veling and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2002-11-12 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gifted theologian sheds light on the meaning and value of intentional faith communities in the margins of parish life.
Book Synopsis Religion Matters by : William A. Mirola
Download or read book Religion Matters written by William A. Mirola and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-01-08 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion Matters: What Sociology Teaches Us About Religion in Our World is organized around the biggest questions that arrise in the field of sociology of religion.This is a new text for the sociology of religion course. Instead of surveying this field systematically, the text focuses on the major questions that generate the most discussion and debate in the sociology of religion field.
Book Synopsis Alternative Futures for Worship by : Bernard J. Lee
Download or read book Alternative Futures for Worship written by Bernard J. Lee and published by Liturgical Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These volumes provide creative and provocative analysis of each of the Church's seven sacraments.
Book Synopsis The Spirituality of Community Life by : Ron McDonald
Download or read book The Spirituality of Community Life written by Ron McDonald and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Find out how communities can help people transcend their individual needs to live richer, fuller lives The Spirituality of Community Life is a deeply personal analysis of community life and its importance in helping people develop to their full potential. Dr. Ron McDonald, a pastoral counselor, examines the dynamics of community life from the perspective of the participant in a variety of settings, including the classroom, sports teams, church groups, recreational groups, and the workplace. This unique book presents alternatives to a culture that creates competition, separation, and insecurity, focusing instead on communities that encourage civility, understanding, compromise, and altruism. The Spirituality of Community Life analyzes the need for community life and the obstacles to it found in American culture, where money and power rule and people conform to stay out of trouble. The book presents insights into the importance and manner of building communities instead of efficient organizations that are fueled by crisis. Topics examined include growth and size as mistaken ideals, early Christian community life, the “What Would Jesus Do?” phenomenon, the spiritual disease caused by fighting enemies, the place of art and dance in community life, and leadership. The Spirituality of Community Life looks at a variety of communities, including: hikers on the Appalachian Trail a college track and country team a seminary course on the Gospel of Mark a church health center a traditional Quaker meeting an open education elementary school a championship basketball team an annual meeting of pastoral counselors and much more The Spirituality of Community Life also examines the deeply spiritual nature of community life, including insights into early Christian community history and how community life was crucial in the lives of our greatest spiritual leaders. The book is essential for anyone seeking to be the kind of leader who can build and nurture communities.
Download or read book The Living Church written by and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Pathways to Re-creating Religious Communities by : Patricia Wittberg
Download or read book Pathways to Re-creating Religious Communities written by Patricia Wittberg and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Religious life has always been an essential and dynamic component of the church. Religious communities historically have met the needs of the surroundng society: in education, the arts, medical care, and social work. But why do we need religious communities now? What purpose do they serve within the church and within society? Patricia Wittberg offers some practical and prophetic answers." "There are four basic questions that a religious community must answer if it is to survive and grow in the twenty-first century. What is our fundamental reason for existing as a community? What distinguishes members from non-members? How will we live out our fundamental purpose in daily life? What resources do we need, and where can they be found? Using the metaphor of a journey, this book suggests ways of addressing these questions, based on studies of other religious communities - past and present, Catholic and those of other religions." "The author also identifies pitfalls that commonly deter new communities and suggests how these pitfalls may be avoided. Included is a selection of "journeystories" that present some fictional founding and refounding journeys; these can serve as starting points for brainstorming by religious communities interested in refounding themselves. This is a hopeful, popularly written book that will appeal not only to all religious but to general readers as well since it has great importance for the life of the entire church."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Basic Communities written by David Clark and published by London : S.P.C.K.. This book was released on 1977 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
