In the Course of a Lifetime Tracing Religious Belief, Practice, and Change [Paperback]

In the Course of a Lifetimeprovides an unprecedented portrait of the dynamic role religion plays in the everyday experiences of Americans over the course of their lives. The book draws from a unique sixty-year-long study of close to two hundred mostly Protestant and Catholic men and women who were born in the 1920s and interviewed in adolescence, and again in the 1950s, 1970s, 1980s, and late 1990s. Woven throughout with rich, intimate life stories, the book presents and analyzes a wide range of data from this study on the participants' religious and spiritual journeys. A testament to the vibrancy of religion in the United States,In the Course of a Lifetimeprovides an illuminating and sometimes surprising perspective on how individual lives have intersected with cultural change throughout the decades of the twentieth century.

Michele Dillon,Professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire, is author ofCatholic Identity: Balancing Reason, Faith and PowerandDebating Divorce: Moral Conflict in Ireland.She editedHandbook of the Sociology of Religion.Paul Wink,Professor of Psychology at Wellesley College, has written extensively on adult development and is coeditor, with J. James, ofThe Crown of Life: Dynamics of the Early Post-Retirement Period.

Dillon and Wink bring their combination of sociological and psychological perspectives to this landmark study, making possible a fascinating series of individual portraitsand a fresh new window on how life and faith have changed over the last century. Nancy T. Ammerman, author ofPillars of Faith: American Congregations and their Partners, Building Traditions, Building Communities

The rich findings in this landmark volume challenge many assumptions about religion and the life course while documenting the multiple ways, both direct and subtle, that faith relates to personality, social attitudes, community involvement, psl'