For many, the experience of religion and the family are organically connected: first exposure to religion often comes through the family, and, in families that practice a religion, it often has a shaping effect on their traditions, roles, practices, or structure. The author of this text captures the important relationship between religion and the family with a review of relevant literature on the subject, synthesizing it within a theoretical framework. The work begins with an introduction to the neofunctionalist theoretical framework of the family. This framework is connected to a...

In Society, Spirituality, and the Sacred, Swenson draws on both Weber's Charisma and Routinization of Charisma and Thomas O'Dea's Dilemmas of the Institutionalization of Religion to reveal how religion has both a positive and negative effect on people. Moving from the individual experience of the sacred to the more institutional religious experience, the book explores the many manifestations of religious life and offers a synthesis of folk religions, new religions, the New Age Movement, and the challenges posed by the secularization of contemporary life. This approach...

For many, the experience of religion and the family are organically connected: first exposure to religion often comes through the family, and, in families that practice a religion, it often has a shaping effect on their traditions, roles, practices, or structure. The author of this text captures the important relationship between religion and the family with a review of relevant literature on the subject, synthesizing it within a theoretical framework. The work begins with an introduction to the neofunctionalist theoretical framework of the family. This framework is connected to a...