Review Essay: Religion at the Center of the City: Miguel A. De La Torre, La Lucha for Cuba: Religion and Politics on the Streets of Miami. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, pp. xix, 181, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, £55.00 cloth, £21.95 paper. Etan Diamond, Souls of the City: Religion and the Search for Community in Postwar America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003, pp. xii, 199, illustrations, maps, tables, charts, graphs, notes, bibliography, index, £35.00 cloth. Om

Abstract

The English word "religion" is derived from the Latin verb religare, which means to bind. Taking the Latin root of religion into consideration is helpful in understanding and evaluating the significance of religion, religious congregations, and religious institutions in urban and suburban America in the latter twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Religion and religious congregations shape, define, sustain, and bind communities in ways other institutions cannot. These scholars identify voluntarism, the exilic experience, religious particularism, religion and identity, and religion and political power as binding agents in religious communities in Boston, Massachusetts; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Miami, Florida.Streets of Glory is a sociological study of the meaning of religious congregations in an African American neighborhood in Boston called Four Corners. Souls of the City is a social history of the growth of suburban religious congregations in Indianapolis since the 1950s and their effects on religious congregations in the city and rural areas surrounding Indianapolis. And La Lucha for Cuba is an ethnographic and theological study of religion, political power, and oppression in Miami's Exilic Cuban community.