Coming Together or Coming Apart - Religion, Community and Modernity (Hardcover)

The idea of "community" is increasingly vital to individual and social well-being. Yet at the same time, our ordinary communal relations are being eroded by increased social and geographical mobility, lost traditions, and the growing pluralism of society. Examining this renewed desire for community, this study locates the current problems of society in the conditions of modern capitalism. Arising out of a common matrix of a lifeworld in crisis, contemporary religious, social and feminist discussions of community compose an ideological struggle over the reformation of society. From a background of advocacy and crossdisciplinary work, the text analyzes a broad range of theorists from Daniel Bell and Stanley Hauerwas to Iris Young, Sharon Welch and Cornel West. Through comparison of their arguments about community, it illustrates critical assumptions about the roles of morality and religion including the impact of modernity, the value of difference, the diversity of traditions, and the nature of moral connection.