Coming Together/coming Apart: Religion, Community, and Modernity

While the idea of "community: is increasingly vital to our individual and social well-being, our ordinary communal relations are being eroded by increased mobility, lost traditions, and the growing pluralism of society. Examining this renewed desire for community, Coming Together/Coming Apart locates the current problems in modern capitalism. Out of a common matrix of a lifeworld in crises, contemporary religious, social, and feminist discussions compose an ideological struggle over the reformation of society. Bounds analyzes a broad range of theorists from Daniel Bell and Stanley Hauerwas to Sharon Welch and Cornel West. In comparing their arguments about community, she illustrates critical assumptions about the roles of morality and religion including the values of difference, the diversity of traditions, and the nature of moral connection.