Tuesday, August 14, 2012

"Highly Recommended" - CHOICE Reviews - Worship across the Racial Divide

More feedback continues to come from Worship across the Racial Divide. This one comes from CHOICE Reviews:




49-5448ML39212011-18782 CIP
Humanities \ General

Marti, Gerardo.  Worship across the racial divide: religious music and the multiracial congregation.  Oxford, 2012.  266p bibl index afp ISBN 0-19-539297-3, $29.95; ISBN9780195392975, $29.95. Reviewed in 2012jun CHOICE.

This book is more scientifically grounded in research and study than the title suggests. Marti (sociology, Davidson College) spent more than two years studying the hypothesis that music and worship play an essential role in stimulating diversity in congregations. He found that the hypothesis is incorrect, and that though music and worship are important in multiethnic/multiracial congregations, what is important is not the performance of the service but rather the practices that surround the congregation in the absorption and production of the music. The author devotes a great deal of space to examining the sociological perspective of worship from a practice-based application. He tears down preconceived notions in contemporary worship scholarship about achieving racial diversity and a universal worship experience and about how churches need to focus on their structural practices if they wish to achieve diversity and ethnicity in their congregations. A scholarly, thought-provoking examination of this topic.

Summing Up:
 Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.
 -- B. L. Eden, Valparaiso University