October, 2005 (Vol. 20, No. 12)

01: EUREL is a website newly accessible in English which aims to provide updated information on the social and legal status of religion in European countries.

Founded in collaboration between French universities and research centers, the site features articles provided by a network of correspondents who are specialists in law and the social sciences. The website allows readers to click on the various European countries to read surveys on religious attitudes as well as historical summaries and links to other sources. For some countries, particularly those in Scandinavia, the information is somewhat limited and the surveys are not very recent. While most of the articles are in French, an increasing number are being translated into English.

The website’s address is: http://eurel.u-strasbg.fr

02: Robert Wuthnow’s new book, America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity (Princeton University Press, 29.95) argues that even if their numbers are not great, non-Christian religions, just by their presence in American media and society, are seen as a formidable challenge and even threat by many Christians.

Wuthnow, who bases his research on a large scale survey as well as open-ended interviews with both Christians and those of other religions, argues that acceptance of religious newcomers is far from an untroubled process in American life; views on the nature of religious truth often shape how Americans respond to the new diversity.

Wuthnow charts three basic postures relating to religious truth: Christian inclusivism, stressing tolerance and downplaying particularistic doctrinal claims, Christian exclusivism, which maintains strong boundaries between Christian and non-Christian, and “spiritual shopping,” which is open and adaptive to other traditions, often borrowing teachings and practices from them. These positions often shape the views of respondents: inclusivists and spiritual shoppers are far less opposed to interfaith marriage than exclusivists. On other issues, there may be something else at work: Wuthnow finds that nearly four in 10 Americans would favor making it harder for Muslims to settle in the U.S, with almost a quarter agreeing that it should be illegal for Muslims to meet (one-fifth agreeing to the same measures for Hindus and Buddhists).

Interestingly inclusivists were just as likely to hold this position as exclusivists. At the same time, most Americans feel they should learn more about other faiths, though they (and their congregations) have largely failed to take up such opportunities. Another chapter on intermarriage finds that these widespread unions may encourage greater societal tolerance of religious differences but they may come at the price of more individualistic and privatized forms of faith. Wuthnow concludes with the observation that informal and local projects focused on concrete humanitarian tasks may lead to greater interfaith understanding than high-level efforts seeking to harmonize conflicting religious teachings.

03: There has been much written about the effectiveness of faith-based social organizations, but Paul Lichterman’s new book Elusive Togetherness (Princeton University Press, $21.95) takes a step back to explore how the members of these groups interact among themselves and with other community groups in fostering social change.

Lichterman argues that volunteerism and faith-based social service in general can’t be assumed to be effective without taking into account the large and small scale social relations surrounding such endeavors. The sociologist studied nine liberal and conservative Protestant-based volunteering and advocacy projects in an American city, paying special attention to how members of these groups interacted among each other and sought to create bridges to other organizations.

Lichterman sees “social reflexivity,” or free discussion and reflection on differences and social relations, as the key for such bridge-building. He found that some of the groups’ styles and “customs” of creating unity tended to exclude concerns about collaborating with the wider society. Too often liberal religious activists used language and interacted in ways that excluded dissenters and others who disagreed with their platforms. Meanwhile, the volunteering and networking that marks many conservative faith-based groups may not be able to fill the institutional gaps in a time of welfare cuts since they are based on loose ties and fail to build relations with diverse groups of people over time.

04: The complexity of the relations between faith-based groups and their surrounding environments is also a main focus of Sacred Circles, Public Squares: The Multicentering of American Religion (Indiana University Press, $45) by Arthur Farnsley II, N.J. Demerath III, Etan Diamond, Mary L. Mapes, and Elfriede Wedam.

The book, which is the result of the Polis Center’s Project on Religion and Urban Culture (PRUC), uses Indianapolis as a case study for understanding the ways religion interacts with and shapes particular neighborhoods and cities in general. In the case of Indianapolis, its civic faith, once shaped by a mainline Protestant elite in the city center, has given way to religious pluralism, with its civic symbols now mainly expressed in patriotic and sports monuments and buildings.

With no dominating religion and an accompanying “de-centering” of the city, each neighborhood interacts with particular congregations and religious expressions in different ways. The authors see this “multercentering“ taking place in other cities as well as on a national level where common citizenship is acknowledged along with maintaining important cultural differences. The multicentering of religion has a special resonance with the rise of faith-based social services.

The waning of national religious structures and the new prominence of local expressions has encouraged proponents of faith-based social services to stress the role of the congregation in meeting social needs and creating “social capital“ for members and area residents. But the authors find that the social capital generated in one congregation and neighborhood that may bind ethnic groups or residents together “are often the very things that separate these groups…from others. Strong social capital in one community may mean weaker social capital for the city as a whole.”

06: As documented in Mary L. Mapes’ book A Public Charity (Indiana Univ. Press, $37), another book resulting from the PRUC, Indianapolis was a forerunner of the faith-based social service programs that would later be enacted nationally.

Under the leadership of Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, the city incorporated the work of congregations in its social welfare programs, known as the Front Porch Alliance, arguing that traditional social service providers ignored the moral and spiritual roots of social pathologies. Mapes found that a large segment of Indianapolis churches (and congregations involved in faith-based efforts nationally) failed to apply for funding of their social programs for a host of practical and social reasons.

Such congregations often were unaware of local structures and problems in their own neighborhoods, and the program as a whole failed to receive wide support in the city. Mapes concludes that the short lived (three years) faith-based program in Indianapolis has foreshadowed similar problems with the national faith-based initiative under President Bush.

07: The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism (Cambridge University Press, $27.99), edited by Dana Evan Kaplan, combines history, sociology, and theology (and even economics), providing a comprehensive account of American Jewish thought and behavior today.

Editor Kaplan notes that the book emphasizes Judaism as a religion rather than an ethnicity, and the contributors tend to stress the pluralism, flexibility and practicality prevalent in American Jewish religiosity. Yet throughout the book there is a tension between growing individualist and “post-materialist” values, making greater way for spirituality in most Jewish groups, and the persistence of ethnic Judaism. The former trend is evident in the growth of Jewish Renewal and Reconstructionist movements as well as new adaptations of spirituality in the three main branches of Judaism.

These tendencies, which downplay the institutional dimension of Judaism, may work against the sustained growth of such groups. After all, Orthodox Judaism–especially its right-wing–remains the fastest growing Jewish branch (though one contribution suggests a limit to the growth of Orthodoxy). Charles Liebman suggests in his study of synagogue rituals, that even in Reform Jewish attempts to include Gentile converts, there is a hesitancy to discard ethnic identity completely. Other chapters include Jews and American democracy; the Jewish urban experience, and changing gender roles in Jewish families and denominations.

08: The appearance of the recent book Asian American Religions (New York University Press, $22), edited by Tony Carnes and Fenggang Yang, suggests that the study of these immigrant and ethnic religious expressions has become increasingly sophisticated.

The book covers wide territory, including a study of Hindu taxi drivers in New York, evangelical campus ministry among Asian-American evangelicals, intermarriage among American Buddhists, and the political and social involvement of Asian-Americans. The book particularly focuses on how Asian-American religions are changing the boundaries and religious landscapes of the metropolitan areas of Los Angeles, New York, Houston and the Silicon Valley/Bay area.

National (and in some cases transnational) trends, such as second generation adaptation to American mores of individualism and informality, conservative beliefs, and practice and deepening political participation, are active in most Asian-American religious groups. On the latter issue, the contributors suggest that politics divides Asian-Americans, with Hindus being the biggest supporters of political liberalism (61 percent), closely followed by Muslims, while Protestants and Catholics more likely lean conservative (though the second generation also challenges generalizations).

An important chapter by Carnes and Pei-te Lien suggests that because of sharp ethnic differences there is no one religious demography for this group, but, again, there are common demographic trends: signs of religious disaffection in the second generation of most religious groups (especially true among Buddhist groups), but also a pattern of switching religious identities; arrival in the U.S. increases religiosity in most groups, but also encourages the irreligious (often Chinese immigrants) to be more open about their disaffection; a “new urbanism” among Asian-American Protestants and Catholics as they build a significant presence in U.S. cities; a growth in Pan-Asian identity, particularly where religious traditions tied to single Asian ethnicities are in decline.