Paul D. Numrich is a professor at Methodist Theological School in Ohio and Trinity Lutheran Seminary, and an affiliate research associate with the McNamara Center for the Social Study of Religion at Loyola University Chicago. He researches the social, civic, and theological implications of America's increasing religious diversity.

Elfriede Wedam is lecturer in the department of sociology and research associate with the McNamara Center for the Social Study of Religion at Loyola University Chicago. She has written on urban religion, community, the moral culture of the prolife movement and Catholic parishes in an international context.

"The detailed congregational studies in this book help chart the way to a broader sense of the many ways religion builds community in contemporary urban America. A persistent theme is how the details of each congregation's life - its location, mission, and nature - shape its urban impact ... This book is a helpful companion for all those studying religion in the contemporary city." --David R. Bains, Reading Religion

"This book is an exquisitely organized example of ethnographic work...[T]he work is meticulously detailed...The book is very well indexed, enabling the reader to quickly locate key information. Finally, the authors include an excellent afterword that discusses the generalizability of their results. This section is crucial given the small sample size generally associated with ethnographic work. Numrich and Wedam intelligently argue the merits of their findings as applicable to urban change in other American metropolitan settings. This last note is a refreshing acknowledgement of the utility and limits of ethnographic findings. In sum, this book would make an excellent resource in advanced undergraduate or graduate courses on religion, urban sociology, or ethnographic methods. Moreover, anyone interested in urbanization, religion, congregational life, social change, or Chicago will find this book fascinating."--Contemporary Sociology

"Chicago has always been the epicenter for urban sociology, and now Numrich and Wedam have put religion definitively in the picture. Conceptually adept and ethnographically rich, this book shows us how congregations are shaped by the spaces in which they are located, and how they in turn shape this constantly evolving city." --Nancy T. Ammerman, Professor of Sociology of Religion, Boston University

"Highly recommended." --CHOICE

"Numrich and Wedam invite the reader to reexamine the role of religion, specifically the reciprocal relations between religion and urban change. This perspective encourages the reader to consider religion as both a dependent variable (how religion is affected by urban change) and an independent variable (how religion can influence urban change)." --Stephen A. Matthews, Pennsylvania State University, American Journal of Sociology