Toward a History of Practice. At once historically and theoretically informed, these essays invite the reader to think of religion dynamically, reconsidering American religious history in terms of practices that are linked to specific social contexts. Discussing such topics as gift exchange, cremation, hymn-singing, and women's spirituality, a group of leading sociologists and historians of religion explore the many facets of how people carry out their religious beliefs on a daily basis.
Practice thus suggests that any synthesis is provisional.
Anne S. Brown and David D. Hall examine family strategies and church membership in early New England. Leigh Eric Schmidt looks at the complex meanings of gift-giving in America. Stephen Prothero writes about the cremation movement in the late nineteenth century. In an essay on the narrative structure of Mrs. Cowman's Streams in the Desert , Cheryl Forbes considers the devotional lives of everyday women. Michael McNally uses the practice of hymn-singing among the Ojibwa to reexamine the categories of native and Christian religion.