I am not sure what it says about me, but in my career as a sociologist, I have been drawn to some of the more controversial issues of my time. What James Davison Hunter way back in 1991 called “culture wars.” Culture wars, according to Hunter, are “struggles to define America,” and have been foughtContinueContinue reading “On the Ideal of Ethical Neutrality in Research on America’s Culture Wars”
Category Archives: Writing
Robert N. Bellah (1927-2013)
This is not an obituary or remembrance of Robert Bellah. I don’t have the emotional energy to spare for that, even though it has been over a year since he passed. There are many such tributes, though, some collected on the website maintained in his name. This is simply the text of an entry IContinueContinue reading “Robert N. Bellah (1927-2013)”
Three Blog Posts on Initiation in the Contemporary Catholic Church
Oxford University Press was good enough to allow me to write three blog posts this Easter weekend with my thoughts on initiation in the contemporary Catholic Church. Here are links to the three posts: Initiation into America’s Original Megachurch (18 April 2014) Reinventing Rites of Passage in Contemporary America (19 April 2014) Easter Rites ofContinueContinue reading “Three Blog Posts on Initiation in the Contemporary Catholic Church”
Enter to Win a Free Copy of My Book “Becoming Catholic” from Goodreads
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Concealed Carry Nation: Understanding Armed Citizens in 21st Century America
THE FOLLOWING IS A PROPOSAL I WROTE IN OCTOBER 2012 (PRE-SANDY HOOK) TO SECURE FUNDING FOR A RESEARCH PROJECT ON AMERICA AS A “CONCEALED CARRY NATION,” PART OF A LARGER PROJECT I AM INITIATING ON AMERICA’S GUN CULTURES. On July 20th of this year, James Holmes entered a midnight screening of The Dark Knight RisesContinueContinue reading “Concealed Carry Nation: Understanding Armed Citizens in 21st Century America”
My New Research on America’s Gun Cultures – From Tragedy to Understanding
In the fall of 2001, I received word that I would spend the 2002-2003 academic year at the University of Virginia’s Center on Religion and Democracy. I had a postdoctoral fellowship to work on my book, The Catholic Church in State Politics, which focused on the role of conferences of Catholic bishops in lobbying stateContinueContinue reading “My New Research on America’s Gun Cultures – From Tragedy to Understanding”
No reading, bad writing
Everyone I know who is a good writer is also a good reader. A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, then, helps to explain why so many of the students I teach are (to put it bluntly) bad writers. The article reports on a study released by the National Endowment for the ArtsContinueContinue reading “No reading, bad writing”
Spare Prose PLEASE!!!
Somewhere along the way, probably in high school, college students learn that “good” writing means long sentences and big words. But in my experience, most students don’t have the linguistic dexterity to pull this off. It just becomes an overwrought jumble of words and punctuation. Not that I can do much better myself, but IContinueContinue reading “Spare Prose PLEASE!!!”
On Writing
“Writing is manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.” — John Gregory Dunne (From the April 23, 2006 NYTBR review of Erica Jong’s “Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life,” by Ron Powers)