American Mainline Religion: Its Changing Shape and Future

by Wade Clark Roof

Book Overview

Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney argue that a new voluntarism is slowly eroding the old social and economic boundaries that once defined and separated religious groups and is opening new cleavages along moral and life-style lines. Nowhere has the impact of these changes been more profoundly felt than by the often-overlooked religious communities of the American center, or mainline--Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish.

"American Mainline Religion" provides a new "mapping" of the families of American religion and the underlying social, cultural, and demographic forces that will reshape American religion in the century to come. Going beyond the headlines in daily newspapers, Roof and McKinney document the decline of the Protestant establishment, the rise of a more assimilated and public-minded Roman Catholicism, the place of black Protestantism and Judaism, and the resurgence of conservative Protestantism as a religious and cultural force.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813512166
• ISBN13: 9780813512167
• Release Date: June 1987
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Recommended Buy!

This is a great book for anyone who enjoys the history and social divisions of religious groups. Students, scholars and seekers will all find this book a great reference. After reading, you finally understand how religion, religious groups, and religious ideology play a role in the lives of Americans today. It can be dry and long for persons who just wanted some information but not the nitty gritty details. I highly recommend for social scientists.