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AMERICAN RELIGIOUS MULTITUDES
Public Religion and Urban Transformation: Faith in the City.
Edited by Lowell Livezy. New York: New York University Press, 2000. xiii
+ 364 pp. Maps, photographs, illustrations, tables, appendices, notes,
bibliography, and index. $18.50.
Pluralism Comes of Age: American Religious Culture in the Twentieth
Century. By Charles H. Lippy. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.,
2000. x + 250 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $34.95.
Jason C. Bivins
North Carolina State University
Recent decades have been fruitful for the study of American religion, especially
in terms of methodology. Older narratives oriented towards the "Puritan
establishment" have given way to newer and more polyvalent ones, often engaging
the complexities of ethnic and immigrant histories. The field has become
theoretically self-conscious as scholars ponder how to tell these new stories
and which methods to use. Out of such conversations, scholars are giving
renewed attention to such categories as "pluralism" and "urbanism." These
two books address them in different ways.
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