Getting to Church

Why do people go to church? What about a congregation attracts new members? What is it that draws women and men differently into diverse types of congregations? Getting to Church assesses the deeply personal and gendered narratives around how women and men move toward identifying with three very different Christian congregations one Orthodox, one conservative, and one mainline. Drawing on extensive research and ranging across layers of congregationalhistory, leadership, architecture, new member process, programs, and service ministries, Sally Gallagher explores trajectories of joining, as well as membership loss and change over a seven-year period. By following both those who join a community and those who explore but choose not to, Gallagher avoids themethodological limitations of other studies and assesses the degree to which the spaces, people, programs, and doctrines within distinctive traditions draw women and men toward affiliation and involvement. Getting to Church demonstrates that women are attracted to specific doctrines and ideas, opportunities for individual reflection, experience and expanded personal agency; while men find in these congregations a sense of community within which they experience greater connection withother men, appreciate beauty, and yield to something greater than themselves. Drawing on extensive field work, personal interviews, and focus groups, Getting to Church challenges extant theories of gender and religious involvement.

... providing so much detail has the advantage of contextualizing the study's findings so as to make them accessible to its reader, rather than requiring her solely to take the author's word for it. An additional advantage of this approach is that it positions the book to provide insight into a variety of aspects of congregational life, not only those which are significant from the perspective of gender. As a result, this volume is likely to be of interest to a wide audience, including especially scholars of sociology, religion, and gender., Highly accessible for a lay or novice audience. In particular, I can imagine pastors and other church leaders would find her insights into how members perceive churches, their reasons for joining, and even their reasons for leaving to be incredibly helpful in church planning. Additionally, this book would make a nice addition to an undergraduate sociology of religion class because of its in-depth consideration of religious communities., Gallagher's convincing demonstrations and statistical observations provide ample space for theologians and gender theorists to pick up the conversation... Overall, this book has a crucial role to play within Christian gender debates. Its purpose lies within debunking myths about religious identity and gender that some religious scholars and lay people still uphold. The claim that women are more religious than men or that Christianity is somehow a 'woman's religion' can no longer be reasonably accepted given Gallagher's observations., Including a helpful bibliography, this volume will interest both sociologists and religious studies scholars and practitioners...Recommended., Sally Gallagher's thoughtful and well-researched analysis gives us new insight into how gender shapes the ways that people experience and enact religious commitment, and how they choose to join or to leave religious communities. This nuanced account takes into account a wide range of contemporary American religious communities and helps us to move beyond tired stereotypes about women'sand men'sreligiosity.

Sally K. Gallagher is Professor of Sociology in the School of Public Policy at Oregon State University. She is the author of Making Do in Damascus: Navigating a Generation of Change in Family and Work, and Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life, as well as other works in the areas of gender, religion, family and caregiving.