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This article explores congregational growth and decline from the perspective of long-term members, drawing on personal interviews and fieldwork in a mainline, evangelical and Orthodox congregation. In these, we find distinctive patterns of stability, growth and decline, largely related to congregational demographics and leadership change consistent with findings from previous research. Yet when we shift the perspective from that of the pulpit (number of members) to the view from the pew (continuity of community) a different picture emerges—one focused on the salience of relationships within congregations. This approach challenges the methodological focus on net growth and decline as a way of assessing congregational stability and change. We argue that regardless of whether congregations are growing or shrinking, the experience of worship is shaped by continuity of community—and that continuity, more than size, creates an enduring and sense of connection helps explain why people choose not to circulate, but rather stay.

Disturbance and biotic resistance are important factors driving plant invasions, but how these factors interact for plants with different modes of colonization (i.e., sexual and asexual) is unclear. We evaluated factors influencing the invasion of nonnative Phragmites australis , which has been rapidly expanding in brackish tidal wetlands in Chesapeake Bay. We conducted a survey of naturally occurring small-scale disturbances (removal of vegetation and/or sediment deposition) across four plant communities; determined the effects of small-scale disturbance and biotic resistance on P. australis seedling and rhizome emergence; and tested the effects of size and frequency of small-scale disturbances on seedling emergence and survival of transplanted seedlings. The results of our study demonstrate that the invasion window for seeds is in disturbed areas in high-marsh plant communities that flood less frequently; seedling emergence in undisturbed areas was negligible. Establishment of shoots from rhizome segments was low in all plant communities. Disturbance size and frequency had no significant impact on seed germination and seedling survival. Our findings provide evidence that small-scale within-wetland disturbances are important for the invasion of the nonnative lineage of P. australis by seeds in brackish tidal wetlands in Chesapeake Bay. Efforts to reduce disturbances, large and small, in wetlands can be used to limit P. australis invasion by seed, but invasion by rhizome is still likely to occur across many plant communities irrespective of the presence of disturbance.

Drawing on fieldwork that spans nearly twenty years, Making Do in Damascus offers a rare portrayal of ordinary family life in Damascus, Syria. It explores how women draw on cultural ideals around gender, re­ligion and family to negotiate a sense of collective and personal identity. Emphasizing the ability of women to creatively manage family relation­ships within mostly conservative Sunni Muslim households, Gallagher highlights how personal and material resources shape women's choices and constraints around education, choice of marriage partner, decisions about employment, childrearing, relationships with kin, and the uses and risks of new information technologies. Gallagher argues that taking a nuanced approach toward analyz­ing women’s identity and authority in society, allows us to think beyond dichotomies of Damascene women as either oppressed by class and patriarchy on one hand, or completely autonomous agents of their own lives on the other. Tracing ordinary women’s experiences and ideals across decades of social and economic change Making Do in Damas­cus highlights the salience of collective identity, place, and connection within families, as well as resources and regional politics, in shaping a generation of families in Damascus.

Drawing on theories of structure and agency, this article assesses how women in lower-income households in Damascus use existing gender schemas to avoid unattractive employment and improve their access to income and employment. It highlights the overlapping effects of economic policy and gender dependency schemas on both the need for additional income and women's employment opportunities. While providing greater access to resources, women's accommodation to gender dependency schemas also helps to maintain domesticity and dependence on men. Agency for these women draws on and reinforces a collectively gendered sense of self that is central to the process of both obtaining resources and doing gender.

Based on data from a national survey and personal interviews with more than 300 religiously committed Protestants, this analysis assesses the range and location of attitudes toward feminism among conservative Protestants. Findings suggest that evangelicals are not uniformly antifeminist. Rather, the majority are both supportive and appreciative of the gains of liberal feminism as well as concerned that feminism has gotten off track by promoting an excessive individualism that undermines stable, meaningful, and caring relationships. For most evangelicals, feminism is neither a significant subcultural religious boundary nor a focus of political mobilization or action. Political conservatism, embeddedness in conservative local religious subcultures, belief in husbands' headship and authority, and affiliation with particular subgroups and denominations help to locate and specify the sources that create, reinforce, and sustain more negative attitudes toward feminism within this diverse religious subculture.

Drawing on Connell's notion of gender projects, the authors assess the degree to which contemporary evangelical ideals of men's headship challenge, as well as reinforce, a hegemonic masculinity. Based on 265 in-depth interviews in 23 states across the country, they find that rather than espousing a traditional gender hierarchy in which women are simply subordinate to men, the majority of contemporary evangelicals hold to symbolic traditionalism and pragmatic egalitarianism. Symbolic male headship provides an ideological tool with which individual evangelicals may maintain a sense of distinctiveness from the broader culture of which they are a part. At the same time, symbolic headship blunts some of the harsher effects of living in a materially rich, but time poor, culture, by defusing an area of potential conflict, creating a safe space within which men can negotiate, and strengthening men's material and emotional ties to their families.

Based on observations and interviews in two churches representing two different strands of American Protestantism, I assess the ways in which children contribute to the social construction of class, culture, and religious identity for adults. Evidence comes from observing how congregations incorporate children into adult worship services and talk about them in texts and programs, and from the ways in which newer and long-term congregation members describe valuing and understanding children's ministries. These styles and their meanings reflect the history, heritage, and theological distinctives of these two strands of American Protestantism. Religion, I suggest, is not just good for children; children themselves are a religious resource whose presence in worship, service, and discourse helps to create and maintain a sense of identity, place, and meaning in the lives of worshipping adults.

This article extends recent scholarship on masculinity by analyzing the effects of social structure, social relations, and gendered caregiving ideology on the care men give to kin and friends. To be sure, men spend significantly less time giving care than do women. However, much variation is contingent on the women in men's lives: It is primarily the characteristics of men's families (including wives' caregiving; the presence of young children, especially daughters; and the availability of siblings, especially sisters) more than employment or gendered caregiving ideology that shape the amount and kind of caregiving men provide. Our findings suggest that although men's caregiving is variable and socially patterned, it is contingent on women: Wives and daughters pull men into caregiving, while adult sisters substitute for them.

This article explores the concepts, means, and objectives of spiritual growth across four strands of Christianity. Based on focus group interviews and congregational observations within four congregations (conservative Protestant, mainline Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, and an emerging church), we assess the ways in which regular attenders articulate concepts of spiritual growth, the practices that contribute to their sense of growth, and how a commonly shared vision about what spiritual growth is and how it takes place contributes to a sense of congregational community. We find both expected variation across strands of tradition, as well as similarities (particularly within Protestant groups) in framing spiritual growth as an open ended and somewhat ambiguous process in which the personal and emotional resources of the community support a sense of personal growth and well-being. Our findings also suggest some support for the notion that churches with strong and clear core messages of spiritual growth cultivate stronger congregational commitments—a topic we argue should be further explored in future research.