James L. Heft, S. M., served as professor and chair of the Theology Department at the University of Dayton for six years, Provost for eight years, and Chancellor and Professor of Faith and Culture for 10 years, before moving to the University of Southern California in 2006 as the Alton Brooks Professor of Religion and now the Founder and President Emeritus of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies. He is the author, editor and co-editor of fourteen books, including Catholicism and Interreligious Dialogue (OUP 2011) and Catholic High Schools: Facing the New Realities (OUP 2011). Jan E. Stets is Professor and Director of the Social Psychology Research Laboratory at the University of California, Riverside. She is the former Director of the Sociology Program at the National Science Foundation, and a former co-editor of Social Psychology Quarterly.
Prefaced by the Bishop of San Diego, this important interdisciplinary study co-directed by a theologian (James L. Heft) and a sociologist (Jan E. Stets) attempts to understand the phenomenon of religious disaffiliation which, after having affected European countries, manifests itself today in the United States, more or less spared on this point until now. * Jean Louis OrmiAres, Archives de sciences sociales des religions * I highly recommend this book, both for the extensive answers it provides to its guiding research questions, and for the avenues it charts for future research. * James C Cavendish, Sociology of Religion *