"This photographic survey and accompanying text reveal various experiments in communal living and the philosophies behind them." --

This remarkable compendium brings together more than eighty scholars from throughout the world to examine the experience of the kibbutz and communal living. Through careful examination of the ideological, historical, educational, sociological, and economic origins and realities of communal living, the contributors provide strong and positive support for the belief that a cooperative society can exist within an antagonistic, competitive system. Taken together, these contributions provide dialogue among and between those who research communal life, and those who live it.

After his martyrdom at the hands of the Gestapo in 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer continued his witness in the hearts of Christians around the world. His Letters and Papers from Prison became a prized testimony to Christian faith and courage, read by thousands. Now in Life Together we have Pastor Bonhoeffer's experience of Christian community. This story of a unique fellowship in an underground seminary during the Nazi years reads like one of Paul's letters. It gives practical advice on how life together in Christ can be sustained in families and groups. The role of personal prayer, worship in common, everyday work, and Christian service is treated in simple, almost biblical, words. Life Together is bread for all who are hungry for the real life of Christian fellowship.

During the past decade, skepticism about climate change has frustrated those seeking to engage broad publics and motivate them to take action on the issue. In this innovative ethnography, Candis Callison examines the initiatives of social and professional groups as they encourage diverse American publics to care about climate change. She explores the efforts of science journalists, scientists who have become expert voices for and about climate change, American evangelicals, Indigenous leaders, and advocates for corporate social responsibility. The disparate efforts of these groups illuminate the challenge of maintaining fidelity to scientific facts while transforming them into ethical and moral calls to action. Callison investigates the different vernaculars through which we understand and articulate our worlds, as well as the nuanced and pluralistic understandings of climate change evident in different forms of advocacy. As she demonstrates, climate change offers an opportunity to look deeply at how issues and problems that begin in a scientific context come to matter to wide publics, and to rethink emerging interactions among different kinds of knowledge and experience, evolving media landscapes, and claims to authority and expertise.

WHAT MAKES A COMMUNITY EXTRAORDINARY? When people live in community moved by the gospel and marked by the Spirit, great things happen. They commit to one another. They grieve together, sing together, eat, pray, and play together. They love, serve, honor, encourage, and provide for each other gladly. And they live on mission together. Hearts are healed, walls come down, and outsiders come in. No competition. No pretense. No vain conceit. Just full hearts breaking bread and giving freely. It is nothing short of amazing. Most of us live in a shadow of what God intended for us. Life in Community calls us into the light. Reclaiming Scripture’s stunning vision of gospel-centered community, it inspires us to live in love unbounded. Read it, live it, and join the movement: Help unleash the power of extraordinary community. 6-Week group study included.

From the Shakers to the Branch Davidians, America's communal utopians have captured the popular imagination. Seventeen original essays here demonstrate the relevance of such groups to the mainstream of American social, religious, and economic life. The contributors examine the beliefs and practices of the most prominent utopian communities founded before 1965, including the long-overlooked Catholic monastic communities and Jewish agricultural colonies. Also featured are the Ephrata Baptists, Moravians, Shakers, Harmonists, Hutterites, Inspirationists of Amana, Mormons, Owenites, Fourierists, Icarians, Janssonists, Theosophists, Cyrus Teed's Koreshans, and Father Divine's Peace Mission. Based on a new conceptual framework known as developmental communalism, the book examines these utopian movements throughout the course of their development--before, during, and after their communal period. Each chapter includes a brief chronology, giving basic information about the group discussed. An appendix presents the most complete list of American utopian communities ever published. The contributors are Jonathan G. Andelson, Karl J. R. Arndt, Pearl W. Bartelt, Priscilla J. Brewer, Donald F. Durnbaugh, Lawrence Foster, Carl J. Guarneri, Robert V. Hine, Gertrude E. Huntington, James E. Landing, Dean L. May, Lawrence J. McCrank, J. Gordon Melton, Donald E. Pitzer, Robert P. Sutton, Jon Wagner, and Robert S. Weisbrot.

'Community' continues to be a persistent theme in political, philosophical and policy debates. The idea of community poses fundamental questions about social inclusion and exclusion, particular versus general interests, identity and belonging. As well as extensive theoretical literature in the social sciences, there is a rich body of social research aimed at exploring the nature of community, and evaluating its contribution to people's lives and well-being. Drawing on a wealth of international empirical examples and illustrations, this book reviews debates surrounding the idea of community. It examines changing patterns of community life and evaluates their importance for society and for individuals. As well as urban, rural and class-based communities, it explores other contemporary forms of community, such as social movements, communes and 'virtual' gatherings in cyberspace. Truly multidisciplinary, this book will be of interest to students of sociology, geography, political science and social policy and welfare. Grounded in a wide-ranging review of empirical research, it provides an overview of sociological debates surrounding the idea of community and relating them to the part community plays in people's everyday conceptions of identity.