Listening, religion, and democracy in contemporary Boston : God's ears / William W. Young III.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Young, William W., 1972- author.

Series:

Ethnographies of religion

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Boston (Mass.)--Religious life and customs.

Boston (Mass.).

Listening--Religious aspects.

Listening.

Influence (Psychology)--Religious aspects.

Influence (Psychology).

Democracy--United States.

Democracy.

United States.

Massachusetts--Boston.

Physical Description:

ix, 179 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, [2018]

Summary:

This book is a study of religious practices of listening in the Boston area. Through ethnographic study of a variety of religious communities, with an extensive focus on Quaker listening, it argues that religious practice shapes our habits of listening by creating a plurality of regimes of listening in across Boston's landscape. These practices, moreover, cultivate specific dispositions, as well as distinct patterns of religious and democratic virtues. Through these dispositions and virtues, religious listening facilitates a diverse range of forms of democratic engagement, and varied contributions to the pursuit of social justice. William Young provides an innovative interpretation of these religious practices. It argues that insofar as religious listening helps practitioners to extend and amplify their listening, and makes them more responsive to their communities, it creates a social mode of embodied receptivity and agency. Through both their listening and their actions, these groups express their conceptions of divinity, embodying divine attributes and activity within the sociopolitical realm--serving as God's ears within the world. It is by interpreting their practices as creating modes of social discipline, reception, and agency that the book explicates the full significance of religious listening, in its adaptations and extensions of our aural capacities, and their implications for sociopolitical life.

Contents:

Regimes of religious listening

Heavenly sounds in the earthly city: music and religious regimes of listening

Listening in the spirit: practices of communal formation

Religious listening and the pursuit of democracy

The paradoxes of religious and democratic virtue

Hearing the cry: listening and civic engagement

Defiant obedience: rethinking the acoustics of Boston's religious life

Religion, listening, and the acoustics of democracy.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Young, William W., 1972- author. Listening, religion, and democracy in contemporary Boston

ISBN:

9781498576086

1498576087

OCLC:

1048935615