Richard Cimino,Nadia A Mian and Weishan Huang (eds),Ecologies of Faith in New York City: The Evolution of Religious Institutions

Reviewed by James S Bielo, Miami University, Ohio, USA

Religion’s various entanglements with urbanism piques the interest of scholars, policy-makers, and concerned citizens alike. How does life in contemporary, post-industrial, global cities impact the texture of religious life? And, what impact might religious communities have on the texture of our contemporary, post-industrial, global cities? The edited collection, Ecologies of Faith in New York City: The Evolution of Religious Institutions, joins a deep social science field that has fashioned a bull’s eye out of such questions (e.g., Orsi, 1999; Livezey, 2000; Pinxten and Dikomitis, 2009; Stepick et al., 2009; AlSayyad and Massoumi, 2011; Bielo, 2013). Ecologies of Faith throws its darts from the stance of congregational studies and the theoretical framework of religious ecology.

Emerging from the sociology of American religion, the ecological perspective examines “the way religious institutions adapt to their environments through patterns of interdependence with other religious groups, as well as neighborhood and city organizations and structures” (2). The two key premises here are adaptation and interdependence. Religious institutions exist dynamically in a local context, acutely attuned to social and material transformations that are afoot and in motion. As part of this adaptation, religious institutions engage with the work of other groups (religious and secular, public and private, friendly and antagonistic). An ecological perspective stresses the “open-ended character” (145) of this engagement, encompassing groups and interests “from the local neighborhood to the global community and from the immediate present to the past and future” (145). Moreover, this framework seeks to allow for all manner of interdependencies: complementary niche functioning, extended and temporary cooperation, formal partnership, and competition for material and social resources.

Ecologies of Faith uses the ecological model to address how local religious institutions and communities in New York City operate dialectically vis-à-vis three structural processes: gentrification, immigration, and entrepreneurialism. The volume successfully nuances the ecological perspective by stressing the agency of religious communities, arguing that these institutions do not merely respond to shifting conditions. Rather, they actively shape the local effects of structural processes, as well as their own fates amid urban transformations. To this end, contributors seek to demonstrate how “religion actually contributes to the welfare of neighborhoods and the wider city” (2; see especially chapters 7 and 9).

The editors organized the collection according to the three structural processes of interest, with three chapters each on gentrification, immigration, and entrepreneurialism. Of course, it is a brave endeavor for a volume of any size to try to capture the immense cultural diversity of New York City. Ecologies of Faith makes the effort by providing qualitative portraits of 17 religious communities: five Pentecostal, three Evangelical, three mainline Protestant, two Eastern Orthodox, two Roman Catholic, one Hindu, and one Falun Gong. The chapters range across diverse ethnic and national populations, from predominantly white and AfricanAmerican to Brazilian, Korean, Chinese, West Indian, and multiple African nations. The subtle and jarring shifts that occur when one crosses neighborhood borders are as complex as New York City’s religious and ethnic pluralism. The nine chapters take us to five locations in Manhattan—four in Queens, two in ‘da Bronx,’ and one in Jersey. Most chapters emerge from qualitative research, although there is quite a bit of variation in methodological rigor among them (some chapters are thoroughly ethnographic, while others have a more drive-by character).

For this reader, several highlights in the volume stand out. Chapter 1 richly details how and why two evangelical churches in midtown Manhattan have fared very differently in response to Times Square’s drastic consumer-oriented gentrification. Chapter 4 examines the new, but growing, Falun Gong movement in Flushing, Queens and, in particular, illustrates how “the politics of immigrant communities [are] a reflection of domestic politics in their home countries” (105). This nicely contributes to other ethnographic work that has made similar observations about Cuban (Tweed, 1997) and Haitian (GlickSchiller et al., 1995) communities. Chapters 7 and 9 provide intimate portraits of religious innovators who aim to improve the quality of life for under-served groups in their respective neighborhoods. Ultimately, Parts I (gentrification) and III (entrepreneurialism) are stronger than II (immigration), but this is largely owing to the fact that the literature on American immigrant religion is already quite well developed. The contributors to this section might have capitalized more explicitly on the strength of this comparative area.

One pattern emerged very clearly from reading across the examples presented, but was not fully developed by any single contribution. Every chapter recognizes multi-culturalism as a defining feature of the social backdrop for their cases. Time and again the authors note that, while these religious communities live in pluralistic contexts, substantive inter-relationships or partnerships between communities are rare. In short, the communities represented in the volume appear to function quite insularly. The editors observe this in their introduction (16), and some version of it reappears in most chapters. For example: “most Korean churches in Flushing do not engage in community concerns like housing and urban development” (94); “cooperation between Brazilian and Portuguese churches occurs only in very specific case” (126); “African immigrants are struggling to build communities that can accommodate other cultures different from their own” (163–164); and “by and large [the Hindu senior center in Chapter 9] caters to and primarily serves Hindus” (234). Given that a key premise of the ecological framework is inter-dependence, some attempt to reckon at length with this pattern of insularity (or exceptions to it) would have been welcome.

There are at least two other ways in which the volume ends shy of its aims. First, while the three parts (gentrification, immigration, entrepreneurialism) are internally cohesive, there is little attempt to theorize across them. An afterword that raised comparative questions about how the adaptation, interdependence, and agency of religious communities unfold amid these different structural processes would have fruitfully concluded the volume. Second, and perhaps more symptomatic of the orienting theoretical framework than the volume, the boldness of claims grounded in an ecological perspective seems really not very bold at all. While the volume very successfully puts empirical meat on the bones of premises like niche functioning, institutional adaptation, and agency, the expansiveness of these claims is not pushed much further than their basic observation. For example, contributors conclude with rather uncontroversial claims, such as: “Deeply engrained religious rules are not simple to change or as adaptable as the external appearances or social application of the theology” (50); “churches do not live in a bubble” (98); and “the complex and particular context of individual religious actors matters when making sense of how leaders develop and improvise” (236). Each chapter does address the orientating ecological framework. But, juxtaposed with similar volumes there is little sense that Ecologies of Faith progressively builds toward a generative refinement of the framework (e.g., Stepick et al.,2009, does this very well in testing how religious communities engage bridging, bonding, and linking social capital).

With these criticisms in mind, I do recommend the volume as a solid resource for addressing entanglements of religion and urbanism. The case studies have significant richness, and the organizing decision to focus on three structural processes is effective. Scholars in congregational studies, the sociology of religion, and the inter-disciplinary study of urbanism will find value in the empirical and analytical observations collected by Ecologies of Faith.