Elusive Togetherness : Church Groups Trying to Bridge America's Divisions.

Lichterman (Univ. of Southern California) presents a study of church-based community service groups in a mid-sized US city. Drawing on the insights of Alexis de Tocqueville, John Dewey, Jane Addams, and Robert Putnam, the author examines how participation in local civic groups creates connections to the wider community. He advances the social spiral argument: when individuals join a civic group, the meanings they develop by talking to one another encourage them to spiral outward, creating enduring relationships both within and outside the group and thus empowering civil society. Basing his work on participant observation and case studies of eight groups and volunteer projects, Lichterman highlights the power of group-building customs and their influence on social action. He shows how religion influences the social spiral; how civic groups and culture function and build different kinds of bridges; and how customs shape the possibilities for social reflexivity. This theory-driven ethnographic study demonstrates that there are different sets of cultural customs that enable and constrain what people do in faith-based civic groups, and that cultural discourses do not create meaning all by themselves, but are filtered through the style of the group using the discourse. A valuable addition to the fields of religion and community development. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. D. A. Chekki emeritus, University of Winnipeg