Living Faith

Scholars have made urban mothers living in poverty a focus of their research for decades. These women's lives can be difficult as they struggle to care for their children while surviving on welfare or working at low-wage jobs and sometimes facing physical or mental health problems. But until now little attention has been paid to an important force in these women's lives: religion. Through interviews with women from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds and with a sophisticated analysis of how faith both motivates and constrains their actions, Living Faith reveals the many ways that belief serves as a lens through which many view and interpret their worlds. Book jacket.

Susan Crawford Sullivan is assistant professor of sociology and an Edward Bennett Williams Fellow at the College of the Holy Cross. She has also been a visiting assistant professor and research associate at Harvard Divinity School.