Delighted, thrilled, overjoyed to announce that my first book, tentatively titled An Ecclesiology of Solidarity: Ritual, Community, and the Future of Catholic Parish Life is due out from @FordhamPress in 2022.

The book is based on an in-depth, multi-year ethnography I conducted of a small and racially, culturally, linguistically diverse Catholic parish in Roxbury, Boston. Unlike most US parishes, this one has a vibrant history of intercultural and interracial commitment.

It looks closely at the history & ritual life of this particular community in order to ask how we might envision the prophetic role the of parish within a church that is rapidly diversifying and also coming to terms with its own failures in the work of racial justice.

The first year of the study, I lived in the parish house/rectory. There was no priest in residence. I experienced the inner life of this community in a way that most laypeople, especially women, don’t have access to. (It was one of the best years of my life.)

The question of what it means to be a community of solidarity in difference (here I intentionally eschew the rosier but overused, misunderstood phrase 'unity in diversity') is one of the most urgent tasks facing the Catholic church--and those who study it--in the 21st century.

Situated at the lively intersection of ecclesiology and ethnography, this book is my attempt at a way in to this question. I hope you'll keep your eye out for it!

(I signed the contract the first week of November, which felt like a disorientingly silly time to announce anything. And then I neglected to announce it at all.)