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This study examines the organizational practices and experiences of congregational diversity in an evangelical urban church. Based on data collected using ethnographic methods over an 18-month period, this study suggests a principal organizational practice (managed diversity) employed by white church leaders produces complex and consequential outcomes for the racial experiences of congregation members. Specifically, the management of diversity results in three techniques integral to organizational outcomes that reveal the mechanisms by which race is conceptualized and manipulated to navigate new religious markets. This study contributes to ongoing scholarship about the conceptual apparatus that voluntary organizations engage to foster racial diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Christian Music (CCM), popular music featuring evangelical Christian lyrics, is one of the most widely consumed forms of commercial entertainment for America's 70–80 million white evangelical Christians. CCM is an excellent lens through which to examine the complex interactions of religious faith, community sentiment, and popular music practices in the contemporary US. I explain how CCM performs the ‘pastoral’ task of reinforcing Christian faith in an evangelical megachurch in the suburbs of Sacramento, California. I argue that a monthly concert series not only guides evangelical Christians in their ‘walk’, but also helps constitute the flock by building a sense of community. I suggest three spatial analytics to understand CCM's pastoral role: the place of the suburb, the sacred space of the church coffeehouse, and the body. At all three scales of analysis, the musical and religious practices of CCM at one suburban church spiritualize the everyday lives of the participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article presents information on articles and dissertations related to sociology of urban churches, published in different issues of the journal "Review of Religious Research." A topic concentrating on religion and revolutionary beliefs, entitled "Religion and Revolutionary Beliefs: Sociological and Historical Dimensions in Max Weber's Work," distinguishes between Weber's developmental theory of modern revolutionary beliefs and his sociology of ideological virtuosi and of social marginality. Another article "The Sociology of Urban Protestantism According to Harlan Paul Douglass," is delimited to urban Protestantism. It explores a segment of the corpus in terms of themes involving church-community research, a typology of urban churches, and the Protestant church as a social institution. Another topic examines the theology of salvation implicit within the evangelistic message of Billy Graham. By stressing soteriology, adequate weight can be given Graham's self-understanding as an evangelist.