Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape

Fascinating insights into modern urban religious practice make Orsi's collection a must-read. --Publishers Weekly

The essays provide insight into the cultural creativity, reinterpretation of worship and religious ingenuity of city people over the last 50 years. --Library Journal

At last, a major dissection of the great mystery in modern American
life--how religion and spirituality prospered amidst industrialization,
urbanization, and rampant technological change after 1880! --Jon Butler, Yale University

Urban religion strikes many as an oxymoron. How can religion thrive in the alienated, secular, fast-paced, and materialistic world of the modern, Western city? The authors in this collection believe that cities not only can provide the settings for religious expression, but also are material to the experiences which give rise to those religious expressions. In this book, they explore the distinctly urban forms of religious experience and practice that have developed in relation to the spaces, social conditions, and history of American cities.

Author: Robert A. Orsi
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 07/22/1999
Pages: 416
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.18h x 6.04w x 1.04d
ISBN: 9780253212764

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 08/01/1999 pg. 100
Christian Century 06/27/2001 pg. 20

About the Author

Robert A. Orsi is Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University and author of The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 and Thank You, St. Jude: Women's Devotions to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes. He has taught at Fordham University at Lincoln Center and at the Universita degli Studi di Roma and has held fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Orsi's books have been awarded the Alpha Sigma Nu National Book Prize of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (1985); the American Catholic Historical Association's John Gilmary Shea Prize (1986); and the Merle Curti Award in American Social History from the Organization of American Historians (1998).

List of contributors: (CB will pass contributor info to Marketing as soon as it is complete)
Wayne Ashley
David H. Brown
Karen McCarthy Brown
Madeline Duntley
Jack Kugelmass
Joseph Sciorra
Thomas A. Tweed
Joanne Punzo Waghorne
Diane Winston