Over the past two decades of the twentieth century, “congregational studies” came to be a recognized field of study in the United States, and a variety of American political and social developments thrust congregations into the public and academic spotlight. One could easily look at this growing body of U.S. literature as a peculiar creation of American angst about the loss of social capital, the American tradition of voluntary congregationalism, and the largess of the Lilly Endowment. Such are the perceptive observations in Arthur Farnsley's introductory chapter in this book. What the editors’ own introductory chapter also does, however, is demonstrate that the study of congregations has by no means been limited to this recent American research stream. It is both older and broader than the literature that is generally placed under that rubric. On both sides of the Atlantic, researchers were studying the practices, organizational structures, and impacts of congregations long before the recent boom.

This collection should, in fact, dispel the notion that congregational studies can be done only in the United States, while also pushing the methodological and analytical frameworks beyond what recent American contributors have had to offer. Many European scholars have dismissed American research as irrelevant to the established church traditions across the Atlantic. This collection illustrates both the similarities and the differences, thereby demonstrating the utility of broadening the conversation. Neither American congregations nor European ones are as unique as either set of scholars, in isolation, might be tempted to believe.

The chapters in the middle section of this book simply present current studies of congregations in the United Kingdom. They focus on different traditions (Anglican, free church, and Catholic), diverse locations, and a variety of methods. They ask how congregations talk about and enact their identities. They look at internal ritual and discourse, as well as public and community culture. Together, they provide a valuable introduction to the variety of congregational life in the United Kingdom today. It may be a diminished version of its former self, but it is by no means nonexistent. None of the chapters directly addresses the implied comparisons to the United States, but the very presentation of the data makes those comparisons possible.

Timothy Jenkins, for instance, situates his study of congregations within the study of a particular urban district, asking what it means in this community to be a person who goes to church. He notes that there is a kind of “division of symbolic labour” in the community, with some people actually attending services, while others “in a less public way subscribe to [church] values [of the common good] and claim less ostentatiously to embody them themselves” (120). The notion that churches embody this sort of common good and that one can support it without actually attending might seem a peculiarly European product of established state religion, but I suspect that similar patterns are fairly widespread in the Untied States, even if not as entrenched as in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe.

A similar cultural reality is described by Douglas Davies's chapter on “occasional congregations.” There are a variety of ritual occasions (from Christmas to Harvest Thanksgiving to weddings and funerals and commemorations of national tragedies) that draw significant participation from people who are not on the church's active membership (electoral) roll. Davies explores the varying ways in which priests think about the balance between the “gathered community of the faithful” and the larger population living under their official care. A substantial majority of the clergy recognize both groups as the object of their ministry, undoubtedly exhibiting more concern for those “occasional” congregations that would be present among most American clergy.

Paul Chambers's excellent chapter on the failures of evangelical attempts at renewing a traditional working-class Anglican parish in Wales takes full account of the particularities of the UK context, as well. He richly describes the way that community life and church life are woven together in a parish that really is a parish. While the details are distinctive, the lesson is more general. When new leaders attempt to implement change, they are very likely to trip on the smallest details of the way that congregational cultures are woven together.

Philip Richter makes a similar point about the small details that make up a denominational culture. He offers a suggestive research strategy focused on exploring the everyday surprises over which people often trip as they pass back and forth among different churches. Even as we hear a great deal about the presumed demise of denominations, he rightly calls on students of congregations to pay attention to the denominational traditions within which churches stand.

His chapter is included among the methodological and theoretical contributions in the third section of the book, along with very useful explorations of the messiness of ethnographic research, the necessity of paying attention to gender, and the challenges of doing “applied” research in congregations. There we also find Helen Cameron's chapter that asks “Are Congregations Associations?” She notes that few congregations fully meet the definitional criteria established by organizational studies scholars, and the deviations depend in large measure on traditions of denominational theology and polity. This suggests both the ways that organizational theories can assist analysis of congregations and the ways that congregations may have things to teach students of organizations.

As with any edited collection, it is difficulty to do justice here to the range of contributions. And, as is so often the case, brief essays in a collection like this can present only a frustratingly truncated version of a project. The good news about that, of course, is that the reader is offered a veritable feast of references to the authors’ own monographs and the additional literature out of which these studies have been shaped. The book also provides a fresh way to assess the state of religion in the United Kingdom. While surveys of belief and attendance may offer part of the story, these on-the-ground research reports allow a much more direct view of the struggles and strengths of religious life today.