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Author: Stephen Ellingson Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226204928 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 261
Book Description
Religious traditions provide the stories and rituals that define the core values of church members. Yet modern life in America can make those customs seem undesirable, even impractical. As a result, many congregations refashion church traditions so they may remain powerful and salient. How do these transformations occur? How do clergy and worshipers negotiate which aspects should be preserved or discarded? Focusing on the innovations of several mainline Protestant churches in the San Francisco Bay Area, Stephen Ellingson’s The Megachurch and the Mainline provides new understandings of the transformation of spiritual traditions. For Ellingson, these particular congregations typify a new type of Lutheranism—one which combines the evangelical approaches that are embodied in the growing legion of megachurches with American society’s emphasis on pragmatism and consumerism. Here Ellingson provides vivid descriptions of congregations as they sacrifice hymns in favor of rock music and scrap traditional white robes and stoles for Hawaiian shirts, while also making readers aware of the long history of similar attempts to Americanize the Lutheran tradition. This is an important examination of a religion in flux—one that speaks to the growing popularity of evangelicalism in America.
Author: Stephen Ellingson Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226204928 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 261
Book Description
Religious traditions provide the stories and rituals that define the core values of church members. Yet modern life in America can make those customs seem undesirable, even impractical. As a result, many congregations refashion church traditions so they may remain powerful and salient. How do these transformations occur? How do clergy and worshipers negotiate which aspects should be preserved or discarded? Focusing on the innovations of several mainline Protestant churches in the San Francisco Bay Area, Stephen Ellingson’s The Megachurch and the Mainline provides new understandings of the transformation of spiritual traditions. For Ellingson, these particular congregations typify a new type of Lutheranism—one which combines the evangelical approaches that are embodied in the growing legion of megachurches with American society’s emphasis on pragmatism and consumerism. Here Ellingson provides vivid descriptions of congregations as they sacrifice hymns in favor of rock music and scrap traditional white robes and stoles for Hawaiian shirts, while also making readers aware of the long history of similar attempts to Americanize the Lutheran tradition. This is an important examination of a religion in flux—one that speaks to the growing popularity of evangelicalism in America.
Author: James K. Wellman Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 9780252068041 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 294
Book Description
"One of the nation's best known churches, Fourth Presbyterian is a thriving mainline church housed in an elegant Gothic building in Chicago's wealthy Gold Coast neighborhood. Less than a mile to the west is another world: the Cabrini-Green low- income housing projects. In this evenhanded account, James Wellman surveys the church's history of balancing its theological aims and its social boundaries and sheds light on the strengths and weaknesses of liberal Protestantism as a modern religious institution. Wellman shows how Fourth Presbyterian has moved from an establishment congregation to what he calls a lay liberal church working to overcome class and race inequality in its urban context while carving out its institutional identity in an increasingly pluralistic environment. By examining the church's four main leaders over the course of the century, Wellman tracks Fourth Presbyterian's gradual shift away from an evangelical role and toward the current focus on service, epitomized in the church's main outreach program, an extensive volunteer tutoring program that serves hundreds of Cabrini-Green residents each week. In documenting Fourth Presbyterian's struggle to meet the needs of its privileged congregants while challenging them to move beyond exclusive boundaries of race and class, The Gold Coast Church and the Ghetto opens a window into the past, present, and future of the Protestant mainline."
Author: Tex Sample Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press ISBN: 9780664250997 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 188
Book Description
It will stimulate discussion among persons in the local congregation who are responsible for developing strategies of mission to the diversities of groups central to Sample's analysis.
Author: Stephen J. Hunt Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004412921 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 362
Book Description
The megachurch is an exceptional recent religious trend, certainly within Christian spheres. Spreading from the USA, megachurches now reached reach different global contexts. The edited volume Handbook of Megachurches offers a comprehensive account of the subject from various academic perspectives.
Author: Jackson W. Carroll Publisher: ISBN: 9780664501228 Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Describing the patterns of flourishing post-traditional church in America, Carroll proposes ways mainline churches can use those patterns to rejuvenate themselves.
Author: Jackson W. Carroll Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press ISBN: 9780664222536 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 150
Book Description
While others lament the declining attendance of mainline churches and blame it on an out-of-date tradition, Jackson Carroll offers a more hopeful perspective, arguing that they key to future vitality can be found in the same tradition. According to Carroll, the tension between tradition and change has always been part of the Protestant heritage, and he argues that now is a time when being faithful requires adaptation.
Author: Stephen C. Compton Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1566996201 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 201
Book Description
Not only do new church starts in significant numbers bring systemic change and renewal to mainline denominations, but new church development brings similar change to individual aging congregations in their vicinity. Author Stephen Compton argues that a decline in new church starts in the last half of the 20th century was the major contributor to the decline of mainline church groups—not liberalism or lack of faith, as is often cited. He shows in this book how introducing considerable numbers of new congregations into these old denominations can cause these venerable institutions to revisit the meaning of "church" and "congregation," develop a clearer vision of their collective mission, and grow in their ability to bring about positive change in the world. In effect, he contends, new churches in an aging organization do not merely make it grow. They make it change in ways that make it more effective in its mission and ministries. This book will appeal to leaders across denominational lines, including those not ordinarily called "mainline," and especially to pastors and leaders of older congregations.
Author: Jason S. Lantzer Publisher: NYU Press ISBN: 0814753310 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 198
Book Description
Since the Revolutionary War, Mainline Christianity has been comprised of the Seven Sisters of American Protestantism—the Congregational Church, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church, the United Methodist Church, the American Baptist Convention, and the Disciples of Christ. These denominations have been the dominant cultural representatives since the nineteenth century of how and where the majority of American Christians worship. Today, however, the Seven Sisters no longer represent most American Christians. The Mainline has been shrinking while evangelical and fundamentalist churches, as well as non denominational congregations and mega churches, have been attracting more and more members. In this comprehensive and accessible book, Jason S. Lantzer chronicles the rise and fall of the Seven Sisters, documenting the ways in which they stopped shaping American culture and began to be shaped by it. After reviewing and critiquing the standard decline narrative of the Mainline he argues for a reconceptualization of the Mainline for the twenty-first century, a new grouping of Seven Sisters that seeks to recognize the vibrancy of American Christianity.
Author: David Salter Williams Publisher: University of Georgia Press ISBN: 0820336386 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
This sweeping overview of the role religion, especially diverse denominations of Christianity, has played in Georgia's history, from pre-colonial days to the modern era, uses the stories of important figures to portray larger historical narratives and denominational battles.
Author: Michael Piazza Publisher: The Pilgrim Press ISBN: 0829819002 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 248
Book Description
Accurate and strategic evidence that the decline of the mainline, progressive church can be slowed and even reversed, despite the challenges it is facing.
Author: Stephen Ellingson
Author: Stephen Ellingson
Author: James K. Wellman
Author: Tex Sample
Author: Stephen J. Hunt
Author: Jackson W. Carroll
Author: Jackson W. Carroll
Author: Stephen C. Compton
Author: Jason S. Lantzer
Author: David Salter Williams
Author: Michael Piazza