Congregations and faith-based organizations have become key participants in America’s welfare revolution. Recent legislation has expanded the social welfare role of religious communities, thus revealing a pervasive lack of faith in purely economic responses to poverty.Charitable Choices is an ethnographic study of faith-based poverty relief in 30 congregations in the rural south. Drawing on in-depth interviews and fieldwork in Mississippi faith communities, it exami...

In this rich collection of essays, editors Dale McConkey and Peter Augustine Lawler explore the contributions that religious faith and morality can make to a civil society. Though the level of religious expression has remained high in the United States, the shift from traditional religious beliefs to a far more individualized style of faith has led many to contend that no faith commitment, collective or personal, should contribute to the vibrancy of a civil democratic society. Challenging ...

In their introduction, the editors of New Ways of Doing Business assert that in retrospect, it will be apparent that today's government, that of the early years of the 21st century, 'was undergoing its most significant transformation since the decade of the 1930's when direct government-delivered services grew significantly as part of the New Deal.' This newest volume in the IBM Endowment for the Business of Government series is an invaluable guide to navigating the sometimes controversial...

This volume offers an in-depth examination of a diverse range of faith-based programs implemented in three different geographical locales: family support in rural Mississippi, transitional housing in Michigan, and addiction recovery in the Pacific Northwest (Washington-Oregon). Various types of religious service providers—faith-intensive and faith-related—are carefully examined, and secular organizations also serve as an illuminating point of comparison. Among other insights, this book rev...

“Hi, I’m Breezy, and this is my wife, Dodo.” With hand extended, that was how I usually introduced us to new acquaintances. They would react with a smile, a look of disbelief, and a series of questions – “How and when did you get those names?” – “How did you two meet and marry?” – etc.Our response was quite simple. We were born a week apart in December 1928 to couples who were friends in Dickson City, Pennsylvania. I was given my nickname by a nun in elementary school, at about the ...

“Hi, I’m Breezy, and this is my wife, Dodo.” With hand extended, that was how I usually introduced us to new acquaintances. They would react with a smile, a look of disbelief, and a series of questions – “How and when did you get those names?” – “How did you two meet and marry?” – etc.Our response was quite simple. We were born a week apart in December 1928 to couples who were friends in Dickson City, Pennsylvania. I was given my nickname by a nun in elementary school, at about the ...