Words upon the Word: An Ethnography of Evangelical Group Bible Study (Qualitative Studies in Religion)
“Words Upon the Wordis a model of ethnographic reflexivity and methodological transparency. . .ethnographies like this one will remind everyone else that, to some extent, they may still be right.”-Omri Elisha,CUNY Queens College"Bielo's use of discourse theory is among the best I have seen in terms of its clarity and coherence. Simply put, at every point in the book the reader knows exactly what Bielo is talking about, what its implications are, and how it relates to empirical evidence. The book is a pleasure to read... Overall, Bielo's study offers important claims about evangelical Christian culture and biblicist practices supported by a first-rate ethnography and clear analysis. It is recommended for all students of U.S. religiosity, Christianity, and reading."-American Anthropologist,"Given the centrality of Bible study to American evangelical life, the relative dearth of scholarly investigation of Bible studies is striking. Anthropologist James Bielo has helped fill this significant lacuna."-Books & Culture,"Bielo examines the importance of bible study for evangelical belief, institutional life, and interaction with nonbelievers. In analyzing the vitality of these groups, Bielo also adds complexity to our understanding of the intellectual processes of biblical literalists... Bielo has created a useful analysis of an underrecognized (sic) civic activity and has illuminated the complexity of evangelical intellectual processes."-American Ethnologist,"What gives this book an edge beyond previous research is the extensive qualitative data it draws upon; it is a relatively short book based upon an impressive amount of fieldwork... The strengths of the work include its conciseness, readability, and rich but selective use of conversations extracted from Bielo's vast ethnographic data. Wisely, each of the chapters draws evidence from one particular small group—a group whose meeting culture nicely highlights the theme he is exploring—rather than extracting bits and pieces from his total data set of 19 groups... This text will, hopefully, attract more attention to the field of small group research, a large and diverse field ripe and waiting for further scholarly investigation."-Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses,