Tricia Bruce, Ph.D.

Spring 2012 introduced another round of journal reviews for my book, Faithful Revolution: How Voice of the Faithful Is Changing the Church (Oxford UP, 2011).

A review written by John C. Seitz (author of No Closure: Catholic Practice and Boston’s Parish Shutdowns, Harvard UP, 2011) beautifully summarizes the irony of VOTF’s attempts to change from within. As he puts it, “faithfulness and revolution make profoundly uncomfortable partners.” Seitz’s review, published in the Spring 2012 issue of American Catholic Studies, commends “the book’s theoretical contributions…[that]…never outweigh its attentiveness to the voices of the people.” The full review can be found here.

Michele Dillon (whose books include Catholic Identity: Balancing Reason, Faith, and Power, Cambridge UP, 1999) raises important questions about social movement outcomes when she writes in Sociology of Religion that, despite VOTF's emergence, "the vast majority of American Catholics continue to practice the same kind of Catholicism and to think about it in the same relatively autonomous way that they did prior to the crisis." Indeed, this frustration over how to achieve (and measure) meaningful change in the Catholic Church continues to plague the VOTF movement today. As Faithful Revolution explores, intrainstitutional social movements both facilitate and hinder the possibility of real change. Movement actors may already know the “rules of the game” for the institution they seek to change, but this puts them at simultaneous risk of replicating the very dynamics that mobilized them in the first place. Read Dillon's review here.

Earth Week provides good occasion to reflect upon connections between sustainability and one's own field. A recent Sustainability Workshop for Maryville College faculty gave me the chance to do just that.

In what ways does Sociology incorporate intentional consideration of the earth and our impact on it? Are the social structures, relationships, and institutions that we construct sustainable in the long run? Does the teaching and research that we do as sociologists adequately open spaces for reflection upon this?

The American Sociological Association (ASA) is a participating association in DANS, the Disciplinary Associations Network for Sustainability. The ASA member section on Environment and Technology is shifting sociology's focus toward the integrated, systemic effect humans have on their social and physical worlds. Sociologists are helping us think about environmental justice, American environmentalism, and climate change. 

This is the sociological imagination at its best: situating personal biographies within history and agency within social structure. My sense is that Sociology has much to offer, and still a long way to go.

Chiding sociologists for their all-too-common failure to seriously engage religion, Christian Smith (University of Notre Dame) offers a needed reprimand in the current issue of Footnotes (American Sociological Association). "It is time to take religion just as seriously as everything else humanly social, and time to make the effort to learn complicated facts," writes Smith. Read his entire piece here.

The most recent issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (December 2011) features a review of Faithful Revolution written by Jerome P. Baggett (Jesuit School of Theology, Santa Clara University). A snippet from the first paragraph: "This is a fascinating story. Institutional conflict and change, the interplay between collective grievances and culture, the role of religion in social movement activism - there are many twists here and, to her great credit, Tricia Bruce addresses them all in her sensitive and insightful account."

The complete review can be read in JSSR.

Catholic Books Review has just published a review of my book, Faithful Revolution: How Voice of the Faithful Is Changing the Church (Oxford UP 2011).

Following an insightful summary, Melissa Cidade of CARA (Georgetown University) suggests that "This book would be a good read for Catholics who have read about or heard about lay movements in reaction to the clergy sexual abuse scandal and want to learn more. It is also recommended for social movement scholars and those interested in hierarchical structures within the Church."

Read the complete review free online here.

With "Occupy Wall Street" taking hold in cities across the U.S., social movement scholars have been called upon to provide a framework through which to better understand organic uprisings. In my own conversation with a Knoxville reporter for WBIR-TV, I began to explain how social movements can emerge when "political opportunities" resonate with long-held perceptions of injustice. Though the demands for this burgeoning movement may be yet undefined (as is often the case early in a movement's development), Wall Street protests nevertheless draw our attention to inequality and the presistant relevance of class in America.

Read additional commentary by a scholar of social movements, David S. Meyer of the University of California at Irvine, online at the Washington Post.

The latest issue of Mobilization: An International Quarterly (September 2011) features a review of my book, Faithful Revolution: How Voice of the Faithful Is Changing the Church. Reviewer Grace Yukich (Princeton University) suggests that the book "could not come at a better time," that readers "will find its style approachable and its tone balanced" and that the book "makes a significant contribution to the study of social movements."

The complete review in Mobilization, a top journal in social movements, will soon be posted online here, available to subscribers for free or for purchase to non-subscribers.