Suburban Gods

A computer programmer discovers he has the power to impose his will on people, a power transmitted to him via computers. When he realizes that he in turn is transmitting the power to his children, he takes fright at the chaos this could create. To stop the process he abandons his family and becomes a street person.

Albert Hsu unpacks the spiritual significance of suburbia and explores how suburban culture shapes how we live and practice our faith. With broad historical background and sociological analysis, Hsu offers guidance and hope for all who would seek the welfare of the suburbs.

The American suburb is a space dominated by architectural mass production, sprawl, as well as a monotonous aesthetic eclecticism, and many critics argue that it has developed from a postwar utopia into a disorienting environment with which it is difficult to identify. The typical suburb has come to display characteristics of an atopia, that is, a space without borders or even a non-place, a generic space of transience. Dealing with the representation of architecture and the built environment in suburban literature and film from the 1920s until present, this study demonstrates that in its fictional representations, too, suburbia has largely turned into a place of non-architecture. A lack of architectural ethos and an abundance of "Junkspace" define suburban narratives, causing an increasing sense of disorientation and entropy in fictional characters.

In Primitive Piety Ian Stackhouse takes us on a journey away from the safe world of suburban piety, with its stress on moderation and politeness, and into the extreme and paradoxical world of biblical faith. As someone who has pastored churches in suburbia for the last twenty years, the author is convinced that so much that passes off as Christian faith falls short of the radicalism or primitivism that we see in the pages of scripture: a primitivism that includes honest lament, dogged prayer, raw emotions and heart-felt desire. In a culture in which there is every danger that we all look the same and speak the same, Stackhouse argues for a more gritty kind of faith - one that celebrates the oddity of the gospel, the eccentricity of the saints, and the utter uniqueness of each and every church.

"Fascinating insights into modern urban religious practice make Orsi's collection a must-read." -- Publishers Weekly "The essays provide insight into the cultural creativity, reinterpretation of worship and religious ingenuity of city people over the last 50 years." -- Library Journal "At last, a major dissection of the great mystery in modern Americanlife -- how religion and spirituality prospered amidst industrialization,urbanization, and rampant technological change after 1880!" -- Jon Butler, Yale University "Urban religion" strikes many as an oxymoron. How can religion thrive in the alienated, secular, fast-paced, and materialistic world of the modern, Western city? The authors in this collection believe that cities not only can provide the settings for religious expression, but also are material to the experiences which give rise to those religious expressions. In this book, they explore the distinctly urban forms of religious experience and practice that have developed in relation to the spaces, social conditions, and history of American cities.

Humans are created in the image of God, yet by choosing to rebel against God we become unfaithful bearers of his image. But Jesus, who is the image of God, restores the divine image in us. At the intersection of theology and culture, these essays offer a unified vision of what it means to be truly human and created in the divine image in the world today.

Defined by borders both physical and conceptual, the Roman city stood apart as a concentration of life and activity that was legally, economically, and ritually divided from its rural surroundings. Death was a key area of control, and tombs were relegated outside city walls from the Republican period through Late Antiquity. Given this separation, an unexpected phenomenon marked the Augustan and early Imperial periods: Roman cities developed suburbs, built-up areas beyond their boundaries, where the living and the dead came together in densely urban environments. Life and Death in the Roman Suburb examines these districts, drawing on the archaeological remains of cities across Italy to understand the character of Roman suburbs and to illuminate the factors that led to their rise and decline, focusing especially on the tombs of the dead. Whereas work on Roman cities has tended to pass over funerary material, and research on death has concentrated on issues seen as separate from urbanism, Emmerson introduces a new paradigm, considering tombs within their suburban surroundings of shops, houses, workshops, garbage dumps, extramural sanctuaries, and major entertainment buildings, in order to trace the many roles they played within living cities. Her investigations show how tombs were not passive memorials, but active spaces that facilitated and furthered the social and economic life of the city, where relationships between the living and the dead were an enduring aspect of urban life.