Christianity After Religion

Diana Butler Bass

Diana Butler Bass is senior research fellow and director of the Project on Congregations of Intentional Practice, a Lilly Endowment funded research study of vital mainline Protestant churches, at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. Bass is an expert in American religion who works as an author, speaker, and independent scholar. She holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of six books on American religious practice including Christianity for the Rest of Us, scheduled for release by Harper San Francisco in September 2006. Her best-selling book, The Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church (Alban, 2004), has been lauded as one of the most important books on mainline Protestantism in the last two decades and has been featured in The Christian Century, Sojourners, and The Door.Dianas other books include From Nomads to Pilgrims: Stories from Practicing Congregations (Alban, 2006), Broken We Kneel: Reflections on Faith and Citizenship (Jossey-Bass, 2004), Strength for the Journey: A Pilgrimage of Faith in Community (Jossey-Bass, 2002) which earned a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was named one of the best religion books of 2002 by the same publication, and her dissertation, Standing Against the Whirlwind: Evangelical Episcopalians in 19th Century America (Oxford University Press, 1995), which won the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer prize of the American Society of Church History. She is currently working on two more books, Pilgrimage, part of the Seven Ancient Practices series, to be published by W books in 2008, and Episcopalians in America.