Table of Contents

Chapters in Part One are "Liturgy and Social Ethics: Characterizing a Debate," and "Sociologizing the Debate: Identity, Ritual, and Public Commitment."; Chapters in Part Two, Three Case Studies in Atlanta's Old Downtown are " 'People Living Church': The Catholic Shrine of the Immaculate Conception," "'Jesus Saves': Big Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church,'" and "'The Church at Work': Central Presbyterian Church.' " Part Three concludes with "The World in the Church in the World."

About the Author

Christian Scharen, ph.D., is pastor at First Lutheran Church of the Reformation in New Britain, Connecticut.

Reviews

Public Worship and Public Work is an exceptionally well researched and carefully written title examining the dynamic interplay between ritual and social commitment.
Catholic Library World

This is a helpful book which adds thought-provoking insight into the way churches, and people in churches, involve themselves in the community. Worship is not discarded here in favor of social influences but rather is viewed as affecting people in the midst of and in conjunction with the many conditions that influence human beings ‘in the world.' The examination of these complexities and the resulting model for study are useful additions to how we view the connection between liturgy and ethics. The descriptions of the congregations are compelling works in themselves.
Catholic Studies

What difference does it make for the persons we become and the society we shape whether and where we pray, what we pray for, and how we worship together? This lovely, masterly work reveals how liturgy animates moral character and inspires civic commitment in three distinctive downtown churches. In living color it sheds brilliant new light on these axial mysteries at the crossroads of practice theory and virtue ethics, moral theology and liturgics, congregational studies and the dramaturgic study of religion. Amen!
Steven M. Tipton, Emory University, Co-Author, Habits of the Heart