Publications

Publications

	Promised Land: Base Christian Communities and the Struggle for the Amazon (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995; published in Portuguese in 1996 by Paulinas)
Promised Land documents the direct links between participation in grassroots Catholic groups and activism for land reform, providing evidence of the relationship between religion and movements for social change. It was the result of more than a hundred interviews conducted during three field trips. The first half of the book presents six case studies showing various patterns of religiously based activism. The second half analyzes data gathered from fifteen municipal districts in three states of the Amazon region.

		Opting for the Poor: Brazilian Catholicism in Transition (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward: 1986)
The preferential option for the poor is a church policy that emerged in Latin American Catholicism in the late 1960s and that led religious sisters, priests, and lay church workers to take a strong position on the side of social justice. This book traces this development by presenting the socio-political and religious changes that gave rise to it in Brazil and that culminated in the emergence of liberation theology and base Christian communities. (The book is now out of print, but copies may be obtained by contacting the author by e-mail.)

		Rio Maria: Song of the Earth (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994)
This is a translation of Father Ricardo Rezende's Rio Maria: Canto da Terra, an account of life in a rural parish in the eastern Amazon region, that recorded, among other things, the extremes of violence against small farmers, church people, and union organizers. Details that Father Rezende wrote in his personal diary, from which this book was derived, formed the basis for testimony that helped to imprison some of the assassins and one of the wealthy ranchers who hired them.
	Religion in a Changing World: Comparative Studies in Sociology. Westport, CT: Praeger 1998.
This edited volume consists of twenty-three chapters on a variety of religious traditions in the United States and seventeen other countries. It combines solid scholarship by a number of well known sociologists of religion with a readability that makes it accessible to undergraduates.
	Syllabi and Instructional Materials for the Sociology of Religion (3rd. Edition). Washington, DC: American Sociological Association, 1998.
The American Sociological Association provides a useful set of teaching resources in the form of its volumes filled with information on teaching in a large number of sociological subfields. This volume on the Sociology of Religion contains, in addition to course syllabi, a collection of essays and information about textbooks, readers, monographs, and videos.

*Articles*
	"Not Blaming the Pope: The Roots of the Crisis in Brazilian Base Communities." Journal of Church and State 45,2 (Spring, 2003). "Innovation and Retrenchment in the Brazilian Catholic Church." Social Compass 44,4 (1997). "Communautés de base, terre et environnement en Amazonie." Social Compass 44,3 (1997). "Conflits agraires en Amazonie." Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 25,2 (1996). "The Brazilian Catholic Church and the Struggle for Land in the Amazon." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 34, 3 (1995). "Base Communities and Rural Mobilization in Northern Brazil." Sociology of Religion 55, 2 (1994). "The Paradox of Institutionalization: The Roman Catholic Church in Chile and Brazil." Sociological Analysis 53, S (1992). "Agents of Change: Priests, Sisters and Lay Workers in the Grassroots Catholic Church in Brazil." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 30, 3 (1991). "Opting for the Poor: A Social-Historical Analysis of the Changing Brazilian Catholic Church." Sociological Analysis 42, 2 (1985).
Chapters in Edited Volumes
	"The Brazilian Catholic Church and Land Conflicts in the Amazon." In Anson Shupe and Bronislaw Misztal, *Prophetic Religions, Mobilization, and Social Action in the Twenty-First Century. Praeger, 1998. Entries in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society: "American Sociological Association Section on the Sociology of Religion," "Helen Rose Ebaugh," "Marie Augusta Neal," "Preferential Option for the Poor," and "Social Justice." William H. Swatos, Jr., Editor. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 1998. "The Post-Vatican II Church in Latin America." In Vatican II and American Catholicism, Helen Rose Ebaugh, Editor, JAI Press, 1991. "Brazil and Chile: Seeds of Change in the Church." In World Catholicism in Transition*, Thomas M. Gannon, S.J., Editor. New York: Macmillan, 1988.