About the Project

Why Religious Communities?

According an unsubstantiated local myth, Macon, GA is home to the most churches per capita of any city in the US South. Churches like other religious communities come in all shapes and sizes. This project seeks to understand some of the breadth of diversity as well as the overlapping similarities between religious congregations in this southern town.

Religious communities are vital parts of the broader ecosystem of communal life in the United States. Not only to they gather people together in common purpose to construct communal identities, but they also serve the wider community through various forms of outreach and charity. Religious communities are also significant contributors to building what sociologist Robert Putnam terms “social capital”—a type of relational currency that builds and sustains trust.

Religious communities in the United States, like all forms of communal life, have been on the decline as modern society becomes more atomized. Studying religious congregations provides an opportunity to investigate how they build and sustain community but also what challenges they, like so many other communities, face in the wake of modern life.

The Macon Religious Communities Project is a class project designed for students to learn the ins and outs of interviewing and conducting participant-observation field research.

The lead for this project is Dr. Andrew Gardner. All questions about the project or inquiries about participating can be directed to him at gardner_a@mercer.edu