Expectations Defied: Church in a Time of Social Change

Abstract

Had ex-FEMA director, Michael Brown been aware of the results of Mark Chaves's Na tional Congregations Study (NCS), he might have been less inclined to bypass his superi ors for assistance in anticipating the response to Hurricane Katrina. A few days after Katri na struck, Brown intimated that it was the re sponsibility of churches and not the govern ment to look after hurricane victims. But as Chaves emphasizes, congregation-based ser vice projects are the exception rather than the rule: congregations engage only minimally in social (p. 57) and, more importantly, such activity is mainly done in collaboration with, and dependent on the financial and other resources of, oth er religious and secular organizations (pp. 68, 78). Brown was right to anticipate some con gregational help; as Chaves notes, congrega tional social services are typically character ized by attention to short-term emergency needs, especially for food, clothing, and shel ter (p. 65). Clearly, however, the long-term social service demands unmasked by Katrina reach well beyond the resources of even the most committed groups of local church vol unteers. The NCS data come from Chaves's innov ative study of a nationally representative sample of congregations, providing unprece dented information about congregations' structures and activities. Based on their nu merical presence alone, with more than 300,000 in the U. S. (p. 3), congregations are a significant and varied feature of American life, providing an amazing array of social, re ligious, educational, cultural/artistic, political, and community activities. It is an ironic com mentary on the multifaceted place of religion in contemporary America that a key point Chaves is compelled to underscore is that congregations' central purpose is worship and the creation of religious meaning (p. 127). The backdrop to emphasizing worship, of course, is that like Brown, many people have become accustomed to thinking of church as something other than a place of worship, displaced instead by the prevailing Congregations in America, by Mark Chaves. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. 291 pp. $29.95 cloth. ISBN: 0674012844.