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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, gemarti@davidson.edu, 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, bsteens@iupui.edu, 317.274.2418

Richard Cimino, University of Richmond, rcimino@richmond.edu, 804.287.6430 Michael Emerson, North Park University, moemerson@northpark.edu, 773.244.5570