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Book Prospectus
Everything in Common: Vitality in Two Christian Intentional Communities.
Mark Killian, Ph.D.
General Description
This book is about vitality in Philadelphia and Berea (pseudonyms), two Christian Intentional
Communities (CICs) whose participants live in close proximity with one another to achieve religious
values. Pulling from Anthony Gidden’s (1986) theory of structuration, I argue that the vitality of both
communities cannot be reduced to deterministic structural, individual, or organizational causes, as
previous literature has highlighted. Rather, vitality in these communities is affected by all of these
causes in relationship to one another. In other words, it’s not that each cause “matters” (e.g., social
structures matters, organizational behaviors matter, individual religious choices matter), but that these
causes matter to each other (e.g., social structures matter to individual choices, individual choices
matter to organizational behaviors, and social structures matter to organizational choices, etc.). To make
this argument I develop the idea of the vitality nexus – the interconnected relationship between the
various causes of religious vitality.
Everything in Common is based off of ethnographic fieldwork in Philadelphia and Berea from
September 2011 to September 2012. CICs are exemplary sites for vitality research because (1) they tend
to develop in waves (indicating structural changes and/or changes in individual tastes) and (2) they
dissolve quickly (indicating organizational instability). Accordingly, in 2010 an analysis of the Fellowship
of Intentional Communities’ online directory indicated a 70 percent increase in the number of CICs
established between 2005 and 2009 compared to CICs established between 2000 and 2004. Further,
there was a 291 percent increase in the number of CICs in-formation between 2005 and 2009 compared
to CICs in-formation between 2000 and 2004. A similar analysis in 2015 revealed that only 31 percent of
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CICs established between 2005 and 2009 were functioning in 2015. In other words, CICs tend to develop
fast and die young; consequently, CICs that survive their initial establishment make exemplary sites for
vitality research. I began my fieldwork in Philadelphia and Berea immediately following events that
threatened the communities’ existences, observing raw insights into their vitality.
Scholarly Contributions
This book makes two distinct scholarly contributions. First, besides Markofski (2015) tangential
discussion of CICs in his discussion of New Monasticism (see discussion of Markofski’s work in the
“Competing Books” section), the last substantial ethnographic research on CICs was Zablocki’s work
published in 1980. Thus, my research provides a much needed update and refinement to this body of
knowledge. Second, previous research has given tacit attention to how various explanations of religious
vitality interact, often giving primacy to their claim while relegating other claims as secondary causes of
vitality. This research provides a “thick description” of religious vitality, explicitly seeking the nuances
between the various explanations under the much larger umbrella of structuration.
Target Audience
Everything In Common will appeal to two different readerships. First, this book will appeal to scholarly
readers who are interested in a broad understanding of religious vitality, including topics such as
religious demography, religious legitimacy, religious ecology, religious economies, charisma,
organizational strictness, congregational cultures, and lived religion. Second, as opposed to being
theoretically deep, this book will be theoretically broad; consequently, limiting heavy theoretical jargon.
As such this book will be accessible to popular audiences who are interested in understanding church
growth, intentional communities, new monasticism, charismatic expressions of worship, and urban
forms of religion. Everything In Common will be an excellent text for undergraduate, graduate, and
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seminary courses in the sociology of religion, the anthropology of religion, American religion, and
religious organizations.
Publication
The basis of this book served as my dissertation. Besides the University of Michigan Dissertation
Database, no portions of the book have been previously published.
Competing Books
Everything In Common focuses on CICs in general; however, the book includes a discussion of New
Monasticism, a communitarian form of evangelical practice. As such, Markofski’s New Monasticism and
the Transformation of American Evangelicalism (2015, Oxford University Press) will serve as the book’s
primary competitor. Nonetheless, the contextual orientations of these competing monographs are very
different. Markofski’s uses Buordieuian field theory to show, in contrast to the theological individualism
and socio-political conservativism of traditional American evangelicalism, neo-monastics take a holistic
communitarian approach to theological, social, and political issues. In this sense, neo-monastics
emphasize communal expressions of faith (e.g., living together in the same residence) and collective
social action (e.g., the support of progressive taxation to resolve economic inequalities). Due to their
holistic communitarian approach, neo-monastics challenges the political and theological hegemony of
American evangelism by leaning to the political left and emphasizing communitarian aspects of
theology. Thus, Markofski’s book answers the question, “How are neo-monastics transforming
evangelicalism;” whereas, my book answers the questions, “Why are New Monastic communities
experiencing vitality on the contemporary religious landscape?”
Additionally, there are several manifestos regarding New Monastic intentional communities. Rutba
House’s School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism (2005, Cascade Books) explicates the
twelve principles that define the New Monastic Movement. Wilson-Hartgrove’s New Monasticism: What
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It Has to Say to Today’s Church (2008, Brazos Press) provides anecdotes of New Monastic life as well as
practical applications of New Monasticism for congregational development. Outside of New
Monasticism, Janzen’s The Intentional Christian Community Handbook (2013, Paraclete Press) serves as
a guidebook for groups that are interested in developing a CIC.
Much of this literature is connected to the growing field of research focused on the Emerging
Church Movement (ECM). Although, Everything In Common does not directly address this discussion, it
does make reference to it. Three academic books have dominated ECM research. First is James Bielo’s,
Emerging Evangelicals: Faith, Modernity, and the Desire for Authenticity (2011, New York University
Press). Bielo provides an anthropological context for religious practices and preferences of individuals
who identify with the emerging church. The second is Josh Packard’s, The Emerging Church: Religion at
the Margins (2012, First Forum Press). Packard illuminates the organizational processes of churches that
have adopted emerging evangelical practices, arguing that anti-institutional organizations can survive if
they capitalize on religious market segments that other churches cannot capture due to structural
barriers. Third is Gerardo Marti and Gladys Ganiel’s, The Deconstructed Church: Understanding Emerging
Christianity (2014, Oxford University Press), which addresses the origins, public understanding, practice,
as well as the significance of the ECM. Marti and Ganiel argue that the ECM is one of the most
important reframings of religion within Western Christianity over the last two decades.
In comparison to the books on the EMC, Everything In Common connects more directly to the
extensive scholarship on religious vitality, including, but not limited to, the following:
Ammerman, Nancy. 1997. Congregation and Community. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
----- 2013. Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Becker, Penny E. 1999. Congregations in Conflict. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Chaves, Mark. 2004. Congregations in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Day, Katie. 2014. Faith on the Avenue: Religion on a City Street. New York: Oxford University Press.
Eiesland, Nancy L. 2000. A Particular Place: Urban Restructuring and Religious Ecology in a Southern
Exurb. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Hatch, Nathan. 1989. The Democratization of American Christianity. New Haven, CT: Yale Press.
Hoge, Dean R. and David A. Roozen, eds. 1979. Understanding Church Growth and Decline: 1950-1978.
New York: The Pilgrim Press.
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. 1972. Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in Sociological
Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kelley, Dean. 1972. Why Conservative Churches are Growing. 2d ed. San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row.
McRoberts, Omar. 2005. Streets of Glory: Church and Community in a Black Urban Neighborhood.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Roof, Wade Clark. 1999. Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Smith, Christian, Michael Emerson, Sally Gallagher, Paul Kennedy, and David Sikkink. 1998. American
Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Wuthnow, Robert. 2007. After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the
Future of American Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Everything In Common distinguishes itself from these works by synthesizing the claims made by these
researchers into one volume. In essence, the book that I have written is a meta-analysis of the vitality
literature as reflected in two CICs.
General Outline of the book
Everything In Common is organized into eight chapters. The six main chapters contain my ethnographic
and theoretical analyses of vitality in Philadelphia and Berea. The conclusion summarizes my argument
and introduces the vitality nexus. Further, unlike other ethnographies in the sociology of religion I would
like to include response letters from Philadelphia and Berea (if the communities are agreeable). Such
letters would provide authentic assessments of my research process and findings. Besides a 3000-word
limit and a general understanding of what the letter should address, I will not censor their responses.
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Both communities have received early manuscripts of this work and have been asked to think about a
response letter, but neither have provided one yet. These letters will provide readers with a broader
understanding of Philadelphia and Berea.
Specific Outline of the Book
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Christian Intentional Communities
I begin by introducing Philadelphia and Berea through two extended ethnographic vignettes. Then, I
weave together central themes found in these vignettes, relating these themes to the increasing
number of CICs being established on the American religious landscape. Next, I provide a brief history of
CICs in American history, highlighting their volatility. I return to Philadelphia and Berea, noting how they
survived volatile situations and, as such, represent excellent case studies for understanding religious
vitality.
Chapter 2: Religious Vitality: Understanding the Argument
I begin this chapter by setting up the religious vitality debate as a response to the secularization theses
of the late twentieth century. I note how researchers have contributed varied, yet theoretically
meaningful perspectives, explicitly or implicitly framing their claim as “this-and-that matters.” For
example, culture matters (Becker 1999; Chaves 2004), strictness matters (Kelley 1972), ecology matters
(Ammerman 1997; Eiesland 2000; McRoberts 2005), etc. Although these researchers have not
necessarily made their claims exclusive, they often ascribe deterministic primacy to their claim,
relegating other claims as secondary causes of religious organizational vitality. Given this framing, I
address this literature from three levels of analysis: structural, organizational, and individual
explanations for religious vitality. Explanations from a structural level of analysis include: (1) the
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demographic transition perspective, (2) the power elite perspective, and (3) the religious economies
model. Explanations from an organizational perspective include: (1) cultural perspectives (inter-
organizational cultures, organizational ideology, and organizational identity), (2) the religious ecology
model, (3) the strictness thesis, and (4) charismatic leadership. Lived religion serves as the explanation
for religious vitality from an individual level of analysis. I, then, discuss how research concerning the
explicit interaction of these explanations is missing from the literature, speculating that this void might
be due to the fact that the field has yet to apply a theoretical apparatus that allows for such an analysis.
However, I claim that by applying Gidden’s theory of structuration (1986), the field can understand how
social structures, organizations, and individuals simultaneously interact to produce social behaviors. In
essence I argue religious vitality should not be viewed as a collection of explanations that can be
referenced in certain contexts to explain religious vitality. For example, my church is growing because
we moved to the growing exurbs (the religious ecology model), or my church is growing because we
provide space for individuals to practice religious reflexivity (e.g., the lived religion perspective). Rather,
religious vitality should be viewed as a nexus of these explanations –interlinked and irreducible to one
another, such that if we want to understand one explanation (religious ecology) we must understand
how individuals conceptualize faith (lived religion). In other words, I stake my claim in this debate not by
stating, “such-and-such matters,” but that “such-and-such matters to this-and-that, and vice versa.”
Then, I note that this argument is ambitious and involves a broad understanding of religious vitality
explanations. Without excusing the broad nature of my claim, I argue that limiting the scope of my
research to two CICs provides a thick description of vitality, revealing in detail the interactions of vitality
explanations.
Chapter 3: A Deeper Look at Philadelphia and Berea
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I begin this chapter by explaining how I gained access to Philadelphia and Berea. Next, I discuss my
research methodology in four sections. The first section explains my use of multi-sited ethnography,
illustrating my level of participation in both communities through ethnographic vignettes. In the second
section I provide a context for including my children in the research. The third section details the forty
interviews I conducted with members from Philadelphia and Berea (20 interviews for both
communities). In the last section I provide an ecological description of Emeryville and West Sharpsburg,
the neighborhoods in which Philadelphia and Berea reside respectively. This is followed by a transition
into brief histories of Philadelphia and Berea, highlighting characteristics that are reflected in their
pseudonyms.
Chapter 4: Religious Alienation in Berea and Philadelphia: Reflections of the American Religious
Landscape.
I begin this chapter by reviewing research on religious shifts between the Baby Boomer and younger
generations (Wuthnow 2007) as well as shifts reflected in the emerging church movement (Bielo 2012,
Marti and Ganiel 2014). Then, I discuss how Philadelphians and Bereans reflect these shifts, reframing
their responses under the theme of alienation. I provide vivid detail of the ways in which Philadelphians
and Bereans have experienced societal alienation, but particularly focus on participants’ experiences
that have alienated them from religious institutions. Next, I illustrate how Philadelphians and Bereans
have responded with autonomy to these shifts by engaging in the religious economy through the
creation of their own organizations. Referring back to Gidden’s theory of structuration (1986), I conclude
this chapter by noting how Philadelphia and Berea are products of individual responses to social
structures, but simultaneously reinforce these social structures by establishing institutions that mimic
the very institutions from which they were originally alienated.
Chapter 5: Individual Responses: Why would anyone want to join Philadelphia or Berea?
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I start this chapter with two excerpts from my interviews, one from a twenty-something Philadelphian
male and another from a twenty-something Berean female. As echoed by other members of the
communities, these interviewees state that “love” is their primary reason for joining. Then, I illustrate
the many similarities in joining narratives between Philadelphians and Bereans, relating these stories to
the literature surrounding lived religion (Ammerman 2013). In short, lived religion is the combination of
individuals’ religious subjectivities and the manner in which these subjectivities are employed in daily
routines. As is the case with Philadelphia and Berea, individuals who engage in conversations about their
religious subjectivities coalesce to form “spiritual tribes” (Ammerman 2013). However, pulling from
literature on charisma, I show how consensus is built within these “tribes.” Using several vignettes and
interview references, I describe how charisma is legitimized in Philadelphia and Berea through
individuals’ subjectivities, while simultaneously tethering those subjectivities to objective conventions
established by charismatic authority. I conclude this chapter by reasserting what previous literature has
already provided – there is an interrelationship between religious agency and charisma, such that as
religious subjectivities deinstitutionalize, charismatic figures become all the more important.
Chapter 6: Culture, Identity, and Strictness in Philadelphia
I open this chapter with a vignette from a worship service in Philadelphia. This vignette illustrates the
relationship between Philadelphian cultural ideology, practice, and identity. Connecting to literature on
religious subcultures, I note how the community solicits commitment from its participants by creating a
cultural in-group that stands in contrast to unnamed and vague cultural outgroups. I, then, transition the
discussion from inter-organizational culture to cultural boundaries, highlighting the strict social controls
that Philadelphia employs to govern its participants. I provide a detailed description of the Philadelphian
“common purse,” a community policy in which Philadelphians are to surrender all worldly possessions
and income to the community, as well as policies surrounding sexual prohibitions. I relate these policies
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to Kanter’s (1972) work on commitment mechanisms, arguing that strictness is an organizational
strategy of social control that, in accordance with recent research (Iannaccone 1994; Raynold 2014), has
the unintended consequences of procuring members’ commitments. I conclude this chapter by
demonstrating how Philadelphia’s strictness is a reflection of its organizational culture but
simultaneously defines the culture from which it originated.
Chapter 7: Culture, Identity, and Ecology in Berea
I start this chapter with a vignette from a Berean worship service, exposing the contrasts between
Philadelphia’s strictness and Berea’s leniency. Like the previous chapter I note how this vignette
illustrates the cultural ideology, practice, and identity of Berea. What follows is the positing of this
question: Despite being similar types of organizations in similar types of places, why does Berea have an
inter-organizational culture that is lenient while Philadelphia has an inter-organizational culture that is
strict? I answer this question by showing how Berea’s culture relates to the West Sharpsburg religious
ecology. Through various vignettes, I argue that Berea thrives in a neighborhood with dying religious
institutions because it has the cultural apparatus to create (not just extract) religious resources in its
ecology. These cultural apparatuses are not present in Philadelphia; consequently, Philadelphia must
rely on strictness for vitality. Berea, on the other hand, can afford to be lenient because the vitality in
Berea is tied to the religious resources that the community generates from its ecology. I conclude this
chapter by noting that the Berean inter-organizational culture gives meaning to religious resources,
while simultaneously those religious resources provide the context for Berea’s inter-organizational
culture.
Chapter 8: Conclusion
I begin this chapter by summarizing the structural, organizational, and individual conditions that affect
vitality in Philadelphia and Berea, noting the following interactions: (1) Philadelphia and Berea reflect
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structural shifts on the American landscape, yet simultaneously facilitate these shifts as they operate
with autonomy in the religious economy; (2) members of Philadelphia and Berea use agency to create
social consensus through charismatic forces, while simultaneously surrendering their agency to those
charismatic forces; (3) as evidenced in Philadelphia, strictness, in relationship with ideology, practice,
and identity, constitutes an cultural milieu that produces vitality in the organization; (4) as evidenced in
Berea, a cultural milieu defines and is defined by religious resources that produce vitality in the
organization. Then, I illustrate these relationships through the image of a nexus, showing the
interrelated set of conditions that drive vitality. I note that this research has explored only some of these
relationships, encouraging future research to explore relationships unexplored in this study. I conclude
the book with practical advice for religious organizations seeking to understand vitality in their
congregations.
Response Letters
Appendices
Bibliography
Index
Book Specifications
Length:
Preface: ~1,100
Chapter 1: ~5,500
Chapter 2: ~10,500
Chapter 3: ~10,000
Chapter 4: ~10,000
Chapter 5: ~10,000
Chapter 6: ~13,000
Chapter 7: ~13,000
Chapter 8: ~6,000
Response Letters: ~6,000
Total: ~79,100
Tables: ~3
Photo/Illustrations: ~30
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Timetable for Manuscript Completion: A complete manuscript will be ready for external review no later
than September 30, 2016.
References Cited (does not include references from pages 3 - 5)
Giddens, Anthony. 1986. The Constitution of Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Iannaccone, Laurence R. 1994. “Why Strict Churches are Strong.” American Journal of Sociology 99(5):1180-1211.
Raynold, Prosper. 2014. “Sacrifice and Stigma: Managing Religious Risk.” Journal for the Scientific Study
of Religion 53(4):826-847.
Suggested Reviewers
Gerardo Marti, Davidson University, [email protected], 704.894.2881 Brian Steensland, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, Director of Social Science Research
at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, [email protected], 317.274.2418
Richard Cimino, University of Richmond, [email protected], 804.287.6430 Michael Emerson, North Park University, [email protected], 773.244.5570