Social Forms of Religion

Social forms of religion are communally productive at the same time as they enable individual religious experiences. The contributors to this volume test that argument by examining different social forms that Christianity in Europe and the Americas has taken in past and present. They show that these social forms - the ways in which individuals and collectives coordinate to practice their religion - are expressions of religious change on the one hand, and, on the other, also set change in motion and have contributed to growth and decline of various Christian traditions in their respective broader >religious field<. The dominant organizational form always competed with the less formalized and hierarchical forms of the group.