In the course of a lifetime : tracing religious belief, practice, and change / Michele Dillon and Paul Wink.

ISBN:

9780520940031

9781429478199

Title:

In the course of a lifetime : tracing religious belief, practice, and change / Michele Dillon and Paul Wink.

Author:

Dillon, Michele, 1960-

Personal Author:

Dillon, Michele, 1960-

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 282 pages) : illustrations

Contents:

The vibrancy of American religion -- Meet the parents : the family context shaping religious socialization in the 1930s and 1940s -- Adolescent religion in the 1930s and 1940s -- The imprint of individual autonomy on everyday religion in the 1950s -- The ebb and flow of religiousness across the life course -- Individual transformation in religious commitment and meaning -- Spiritual seeking -- The activities, personality, and social attitudes of religious and spiritual individuals in late adulthood -- Spiritual seeking, therapeutic culture, and concern for others -- The buffering role of religion in late adulthood -- American lived religion -- Methodological appendix : measuring religiousness and spiritual seeking in the IHD longitudinal study.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Faith development.

Geographic Term:

United States -- Religion.

Added Author:

Wink, Paul, 1952-

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click to view here

Publication Date:

2007

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
200.19 22	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

In the Course of a Lifetime provides an unprecedented portrait of the dynamic role religion plays in the everyday experiences of Americans over the course of their lives. The book draws from a unique sixty-year-long study of close to two hundred mostly Protestant and Catholic men and women who were born in the 1920s and interviewed in adolescence, and again in the 1950s, 1970s, 1980s, and late 1990s. Woven throughout with rich, intimate life stories, the book presents and analyzes a wide range of data from this study on the participants' religious and spiritual journeys. A testament to the vibrancy of religion in the United States, In the Course of a Lifetime provides an illuminating and sometimes surprising perspective on how individual lives have intersected with cultural change throughout the decades of the twentieth century.

Author Notes

Dillon Michele :

Michele Dillon, Professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire, is author of Catholic Identity: Balancing Reason, Faith and Power and Debating Divorce: Moral Conflict in Ireland. She edited Handbook of the Sociology of Religion. Paul Wink, Professor of Psychology at Wellesley College, has written extensively on adult development and is coeditor, with J. James, of The Crown of Life: Dynamics of the Early Post-Retirement Period.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

Dillon (Univ. of New Hampshire and Wellesley College) presents the results of a longitudinal study that was initiated at the Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley. Subjects were men and women born in the 1920s who were interviewed in childhood and adolescence and in 1958, 1970, 1982, and the late 1990s. Some parents and spouses were also interviewed. The purpose was to learn more about how religion is "lived across time and adapted to changing life course and cultural contexts." The research design and statistics are adequately presented in notes and a "methodological appendix." The text narrative reads well, and selected case studies add a personal dimension to the researchers' interpretations of the data. The book compares the engaging insights and questions that emerged from this study with other scholarly assessments of the role of religion in America--from Tocqueville to R. N. Bellah and other contemporary sociologists. Generalized analyses about the role of religion in America are here perceived not from single interviews, but in terms of data gathered over the "life course" of the subjects. Outstanding among the interesting array of findings are the authors' comparisons of the contrasting dynamics of church-related "religiousness" and individualized "spiritual seeking." Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through professionals/practitioners. R. L. Herrick emeritus, Westmar University