Religious Change in America / Edition 1

by Andrew M. Greeley

Overview

Many observers assume that America is a much less religious nation than it was forty years ago. According to Andrew Greeley, however, this is simply not true. Carefully analyzing surveys conducted over the past half-century, Greeley concludes that rates of church attendance, prayer, church membership, activity in church organizations, belief in life after death, and other measures of religious involvement have remained surprisingly constant.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674758414
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/01/1996
Series:	Social Trends in the United States , #6
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Andrew M. Greeley is Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona, a Research Associate at NORC, and a best-selling novelist.

What People are Saying About This

Greeley has been among the most perceptive and productive analysts of change in American religion. In this book, he analyzes data from forty years and comes up with some surprising findings.

Editorial Reviews

As he has many a time before, Greeley shows how careful scholarship can smash widespread but wrongheaded beliefs about religion in the United States. This book will give social theorists as well as students of religion a rich meal that will nourish the sociology community as well.

Joan Huber

There is no other book that assembles so much survey data for the last fifty years of American religion in such a brief and convenient format.

Religious Studies Review

Andrew Greeley has been among the most perceptive and productive analysts of change in American religion. In this book, he analyzes data from forty years and comes up with some surprising findings that all students of religion in America will have to take seriously.

Nathan Glazer

Greeley, the eminent Catholic priest who is also a sociologist and popular novelist, provides a compelling overview of the survey data relating to popular religious belief and practice in the United States from 1940 to 1985. Using as his source the Gallup organization, the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan, and the NORC at the University of Chicago, Greeley concludes that stability rather than secularization and change has characterized American religion over the past generation. He does, however, see evidence that humanae vitae provoked a major crisis in Catholic faith and practice in the Sixties and Seventies. Interestingly, Greeley finds no growth in biblical literalism. All large public and academic libraries should buy this account.-- Susan A. Stussy, St. Norbert Coll., De Pere, Wis.

Library Journal

Greeley (sociology, U. of Arizona) analyzes data from 40 years and concludes that the upheavels in Protestant and Catholic doctrines and institutions that have affected religious elites have had little influence on most people. For social theorists as well as students of religion. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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