Bonding in the Bleachers: A Visit to the Promise Keepers

Article by John D. Spalding

Oakland Coliseum is packed with hooting, hollering, high-fiving men. Beside me in the rightfield bleachers, a half-dozen fathers in matching shirts and caps discuss their home improvement projects over coffee while their teenage sons crack jokes and shadowbox. In the third deck, a group bats around a beach ball, eventually knocking it to the cheering …

Exploring the Role of Media in Religious Identity-construction Among Teens

Article by Lynn Schofield Clark

In my dissertation research on U.S. teens and religious identity, I explored two interrelated questions: what do teens mean when they say they are religious (or not religious)? And how do these identifications relate to their experiences with the visual media? To uncover answers to these questions, I interviewed over 100 members of families with …

Gen X Revisited

Article by Lauren Winner

A statistic: only about 30 percent of people born between 1964 and 1978 — that is, 30 percent of so-called Gen Xers — belong to a church. Ubiquitous media reports say that’s not because we aren’t spiritually inclined. We are. We’re seekers. We meditate. We go to Sufi dancing on Tuesday nights. We read books …

Habits of the Heart

Article by Martin E. Marty

Look closely. The authors are smiling. They have enjoyed their common work. Yet the smiles are forced; their subject does not elicit natural smiles. They are individuals. On the lower left, leaning in, is William M. Sullivan, who has already made a name for his important Reconstructing Public Philosophy. Next to him is Ann Swidler, …

Individualism and the Crisis of Civic Membership

Article by Robert Bellah, et al

The consequences of radical individualism are more strikingly evident today than they were even a decade ago when Habits of the Heart was published. In Habits we spoke of commitment, of community and of citizenship as useful contrast terms to an alienating individualism. Properly understood, these terms are still valuable for our current understanding. But …

Institutional Ties

Article by William L. Sachs

Loose Connections: Joining Together in America’s Fragmented Communities, by Robert Wuthnow. Harvard University Press, 336 pp. $35.00. Has the fabric of community broken down in America? That question, implicit Robert Wuthnow’s earlier books, is explicit here. At first, Wuthnow’s answer seems to be yes. Compared to the close-‘knit world of his parents, Wuthnow writes, “my …

Let’s Meet

Article by David Wood

Robert D. Putnam became widely known in the 1990s for his influential article “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital” (Journal of Democracy January 1995) in which he explored the significance of “social capital” — the social networks that are formed by church groups, bowling leagues and service and fraternal organizations. Putnam, professor of public policy …

The Establishment That Was

Article by Martin E. Marty

Book Review: Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900-1960, edited by William R. Hutchison. Cambridge University Press, 322 pp., $39.50. The establishment. First of all, about which Americans are we speaking? From the work of Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney I have drawn statistics which lead to this picture: …