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Faith Traditions and the Family (Family, Religion, and Culture)

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This book is an extremely engaging and informative collection of essays by a number of religious scholars chronicling the attempts of various North American religious denominations to negotiate the impact of modernity on the family. These denominational histories reveal periods of growth and decline in the denominations themselves and in their attention to family issues. They also show the range of voices within the various denominations. These stories thus debunk the "culture wars" typology, according to which denominations are labeled as univocally liberal or conservative.

The two major forces that appear across these denominational accounts are the tension between individualism and community and the influence of market forces on family life. The stories show how these broad social forces, more than any one social movement have produced many changes in families. Feminism is usually cited as one of the forces that has impacted the modern family, and it has spurred action and/or inspired reaction in virtually every denomination. Likewise, the recent focus on fatherhood in a number of denominations demonstrates the continuing importance of social and cultural change on churches and families. The most powerful insights from these various denominational narratives are the need to negotiate with, rather than reject modernity, and the important point that the mere presence of conflict on issues like the family does not necessarily indicate failure.

Whether the conflict is over tradition and innovation, individualism and familism, public and private, ideals and reality, or protective withdrawal from or prophetic engagement with the surrounding culture, the essays in this volume show how the family has been an important locus of the reconciliation of religion and modernity in American culture.