Book Review: Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age

Abstract

absence is felt as they take with them their social capital and their volunteer labor. The chapter concludes by outlining four themes the authors gleaned from their interviews about why church refugees are done with church: “They wanted community . . . and got judgment. The wanted to affect the life of the church . . . and got bureaucracy. They wanted conversation . . . and got doctrine. They wanted meaningful engagement with the world . . . and got moral prescription” (p. 28). Chapters two through five are named for those four themes or contradictions and are somewhat repetitive of what is introduced in chapter one. As the chapters beyond the first one expand on these themes a bit, they also feel wordy at times and not essential to gain insight from this book. Chapter one is key. Chapter six, “Being the Church No One Wants to Leave,” is presumably written to the white American evangelical pastor, as the one who would be able to change the church into one that the church refugees will not want to leave. The chapter details suggestions on how to engage church members on those four themes or contradictions spelled out in chapter one. Chapter seven, “Church for the Dechurched,” opens by returning to the titled metaphor of being a refugee. Refugees leave home to save their lives, but some of the culture and meaning of home goes with them. Likewise, here, the authors describe the church refugees as holding on to their faith in God but purportedly no longer ascribing to a legalistic system of right belief. The book concludes with a reminder once again that the church refugees left church in order “to do more, not less” (p. 137), and therefore, that retaining the dones before they leave church could mean holding on to some people who could be a key outreach tool to the nones, thereby shaping the church’s future. There is an excellent TRAILS resource that could be used before covering this text in the Sociology of Religion class in order to frame this book as a sociological reading rather than a religious one. Tal Peretz (2015) has created an activity titled “A Cost/Benefit Analysis of Religion’s Effects in Society,” which can help students think sociologically when they might be unclear how to do so with religion. The goals of the activity include helping students to view any religion “as a social construction, a set of institutions, a resource mobilized by social actors, and an instantiation of power” (Peretz 2015). This activity, followed by discussion of Church Refugees, could together help graduate and undergraduate students to develop their sociological imagination through a sociology of religion discourse. RefeRenceS