Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes

Nancy Tatom Ammerman examines the stories Americans tell of their everyday lives, from dinner table to office and shopping mall to doctor's office, about the things that matter most to them and the routines they take for granted, and the times and places where the everyday and ordinary meet the spiritual. In addition to interviews and observation, Ammerman bases her findings on a photo elicitation exercise and oral diaries, offering a window into the presence and absence of religion and spirituality in ordinary lives and in ordinary physical and social spaces. The stories come from a diverse array of ninety-five Americans — both conservative and liberal Protestants, African American Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Wiccans, and people who claim no religious or spiritual proclivities —across a range that stretches from committed religious believers to the spiritually neutral. Ammerman surveys how these people talk about what spirituality is, how they seek and find experiences they deem spiritual, and whether and how religious traditions and institutions are part of their spirituallives.

Nancy Ammerman's recent work has helped to lead a growing group of scholars who, disenchanted with the perceived dead ends of the secularization versus rational choice debate of the 1990s, recommend new ways of thinking about and studying religion. Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes, which uses a lived religion approach, is a welcome addition to these efforts. Ammerman's innovative account of religiosity in the United States uses qualitative methods, especially elicited narratives, in an original way that combines depth with considerable breadth., Provides a helpful glimpse into how 'non experts' in America talk about and practice religion in their everyday lives...Besides making a wonderful addition to the syllabus of different graduate courses such as practical theology, spirituality, and the sociology of religion, Sacred Stories could be helpful for church book group discussions on everyday religion., Sacred Stories brings to light the myriad ways our contemporaries find religious meaning in their twenty-first century lives. It succeeds in launching readers into new conversations about what spirituality is, how we go about identifying activities and experiences as in some way spiritual, and how existing traditions connect with specific moments of everyday religion., This comprehensive, thought-provoking work adds immeasurably to scholarship in sociology of religion and will help set agendas in sociology of religion for years to come., By setting aside the typical categories academic researchers use when studying contemporary religion, Ammerman and her team document the complex ways religion shows up in a wide range of domains: in communities and conversations, in homes, at work and in public life, and not surprisingly around matters of health, illness and death.

Nancy Tatom Ammerman is Professor of Sociology of Religion in the School of Theology and Department of Sociology at Boston University.