Tricia C. Bruce is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Maryville College, whose books include Faithful Revolution and Polarization in the US Catholic Church. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California Santa Barbara, and has conducted research for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

2018 Distinguished Book Award Honorable Mention, American Sociological Association's Religion Section
First place, Immigration category, 2018 Catholic Press Association book awards

"Scholars of U.S. Catholicism and sociologists of religion will find it deeply persuasive." -- Brett C. Hoover, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

"The work of Parish and Place opens up a door for important further pastoral and ecclesiological investigation. In these fragmented times, it is genuinely difficult to discern how best to support people and communities across differences while also building inclusive communities. Bruce's study provides valuable information and interpretative frameworks for continuing conversations about how best to deal productively with diversity and fragmentation within the Catholic Church. Readers interested in the promise and problems involved in personal parishes will be provoked to think more deeply and critically about these important issues." --Julia H. Brumbaugh, Reading Religion

"[T]he work as a whole will be useful to both academic and professional readers Recommended."--CHOICE

"Parish matters, but so too does diocese. This book brilliantly shows us how the Catholic Church as an institution has made decisions about how to respond to the diversity and voluntarism of American religion. Combining vivid ethnographic detail with astute organizational analysis, Parish and Place adds a critical piece to the puzzle that is contemporary religious practice."--Nancy T. Ammerman, author of Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and their Partners

"Bruce's innovative investigation of personal parishes-an important but under-studied dimension of Catholic life-draws on a rich mix of primary data to insightfully illuminate the negotiation of purpose and place, community and diversity, and hierarchical control and lay determination in contemporary American Catholicism." --Michele Dillon, author of Catholic Identity: Balancing, Reason, Faith, and Power

"Tricia Bruce's groundbreaking work is destined to shape important conversations about U.S. Catholic parish life. Personal parishes, defined not by territory but by purpose, remain an interesting alternative to serve the spiritual and pastoral needs of an increasingly diverse Catholic population nationwide. Parish and Place demonstrates that personal parishes are spaces of hope, pastoral creativity, and identity negotiation from which the rest of Catholic faith communities can learn much."--Hosffman Ospino, Associate Professor of Hispanic Ministry and Religious Education at Boston College