Content area
Full Text
The Crisis in the Churches: Spiritual Malaise, Fiscal Woe. By Robert Wuthnow. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. xii, 291 pp. $30.00, ISBN 0-19-511020-X.)
The Crisis in the Churches, authored by a sociologist, appears to be a misfit in a historical journal. There is little about the longer past in the book. Little moral injunctions and sermons punctuate the pages. Yet historians interested in the soul of America and the souls of Americans will discern why this book is an appropriate choice for review.
Robert Wuthnow, a Princeton University professor and director of the Center for the Study of American Religion, works with historians there. His sociological writing is historically informed. He enjoys storytelling, is given to narrative more than are many historians, and here, as often, employs case stories...