Producing the Sacred: AN ESSAY ON PUBLIC RELIGION (Public Express Religion America) - Softcover

Wuthnow, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252064011 ISBN 13: 9780252064012

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 1994

Synopsis

What is Public religion? How does it manifest the sacred? These are the fundamental questions Robert Wuthnow addresses in Producing the Sacred.
Wuthnow uses as a guiding assumption the idea that cultural expressions, religious or otherwise, do not simply happen but are produced. He considers the major kinds of organizations that produce public religion--congregations, hierarchies, special interests, academies, and public rituals--showing how these organizational vehicles shape public religion's messages and how specific types of religious organization draw resources from their environments. He also reveals the implicit and unintended ways in which sacredness is expressed in modern society.
 
A volume in the series Public Expressions of Religion in America  
 

About this title

About the Author

Robert Wuthnow is Professor of Sociology, Princeton University. He is the author of many works, including "The Crisis in the Churches: Spiritual Malaise, Fiscal Woe" (1997), "Poor Richard's Principle: Recovering the American Dream through the Moral Dimension of Work, Business, and Money" (1996), and "Meaning and Moral Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis" (California, 1987).

From Library Journal

Prolific essayist and author Wuthnow (Rediscovering the Sacred, Eerdmans, 1992) is academically well suited to write this treatise. He seeks to gain insight into public religion by considering the subject as a cultural expression-hence, something that is produced. Specifically, Wuthnow argues that religions continue to exist because of individuals, communities, and organizations and that the sacred-that is, those "symbolic frameworks that are set apart from everyday life"-is also produced. What makes this essay engaging is that Wuthnow illustrates the implications of his subject in our own lives. His observations are both keen and perceptive. Written for the generally informed reader, the text is studious but not laborious. For all large public and academic religion collections.
David. L. Laughlin, MLS, St. Louis
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252064011
• ISBN 13: 9780252064012
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192