2 of 3

Although the book focuses on other kinds of community, Putnam includes a valuable summary of trends in American religion. He shows that church membership and attendance increased until the 1960s but have declined by as much as 10 percent since then. Like other observers, he worries that baby boomers' spirituality may be too inward to generate strong community involvement. His overall assessment& amp; amp;mdash;based largely on a measure that he constructs by combining various surveys asking about church attendance& amp; amp;mdash;is that American religion is weaker now than a half-century ago.Yet he also notes some recent signs of vitality: the vibrancy of evangelical churches, the large percentage of congregations that provide social ministries to their communities, the evidence that people are joining small Bible-study groups and that such groups are generating stronger commitments to service within churches and in the wider community, the growing importance of faith-based nonprofit organizations, and the recent growth in church-based community organizing. Putnam somehow thinks these signs of vitality are not, on the whole, very impressive& amp; amp;mdash;a view that is perhaps rooted more in his pessimistic outlook about American society in general than in a thorough understanding of American religion. In the last ten pages of the book Putnam discusses (all too briefly) how the present collapse of community might be halted and reversed. He calls on Americans over the next decade to encourage children and teenagers to be as civic-minded as their grandparents, to resist workplace pressures that erode the family, to travel less and interact more with their neighbors, to spend less time watching television, and to participate in the public life of their communities.Recognizing the historic importance of religion, he also calls for a new "great awakening" (he does not say how this might happen) that will draw more Americans into "spiritual communities of meaning."The social scientist in me responds, yes, but what about the millions of inner-city families working two or three jobs at minimum wage just to pay the bills? How will they find the time and energy to do more than what they are doing?What about the thousands of urban neighborhoods in which civic organizations will have to be reinvented virtually from scratch?And what about the trillions of dollars now being invested to encourage us to spend even more time watching television, surfing the Internet, and purchasing unnecessary consumer goods?Nor does he persuade me that Americans are genuinely less civic-minded now than in the past. Quite a lot of evidence (which Putnam ignores or misinterprets) suggests that our social connections are changing rather than simply weakening: more of us are volunteering than ever before (even though we may volunteer for only a few hours a week), and this is true among the young as well as the old; more of us serve by working in nonprofit organizations (which have grown by 500 percent since the 1960s); more of us spend evenings with friends outside our neighborhoods (even though we visit less often with our neighbors); and more of us join Bible studies and other self-help groups, which in turn lead us to volunteer at our churches, join community-service projects, and become more interested in social and political issues.Still, Putnam does us all a service by reminding us of our civic responsibilities. Americans have as much freedom now to make informed moral choices as they ever have. Just because social institutions sometimes seem to be unraveling does not mean we have to sit passively waiting for their further demise.

next page... |  2 of 3

share this page

June 12 2000, Vol. 44, No. 7