Amidst a game room, transient hotel, car wash, tire repair shop, and unpaved parking lot, members of First Corinthians Missionary Baptist Church worship in a rickety structure abandoned during Chicago's race riots of the 1960s. Frances Kostarelos, an anthropologist granted unique access to the life and organization of this congregation, ushers readers into its services, seminars, committee meetings, and prayer meetings and into the homes of the individuals who worship there. Her vivid participant-observer portrait sheds light on a remarkably little understood social formation that shapes the...