Building Faith

In this book, sociologists Robert Brenneman and Brian J. Miller share the results of their research on the many meanings of religious buildings to those that are related to them. Many well-chosen personal anecdotes from the builders, attenders, and people from the neighborhood certainly add to the readability of the book. The book’s central theme is the power of religious buildings to “shape lives and communities” (7). This theme is elaborated in five empirical chapters that discuss the impact of these buildings in different stages of their existence and for different groups of people, all based in different bodies of data. The book starts with an ethnographic study of several Christian building projects in Guatemala (Chapter 3). Such building projects encourage congregations to express their identity, but moreover boost community life and consolidate their social structures. The efforts of the community to effectuate the plans and the excitement about this...

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Ethnography · Faith · Identity (music) · Miller · Power (physics) · Sociology · Theme (computing) · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Religion, Society, and Development