Berkley Center

Paul Manuel and Miguel Glatzer's edited book Faith-Based Organizations and Social Welfare: Associational Life and Religion in Contemporary Eastern Europe, published by Palgrave MacMillan, seeks to provide a more robust understanding of the role of faith-based organizations in the delivery of welfare services in Eastern Europe. Specifically, it explores how a church in a post-communist setting, during periods of economic growth and recession in the wake of transitions to capitalism, and with varied numbers of adherents, might contribute to welfare services in a new political regime with freedom of religion. Put another way, what new pressures would be placed on the secular welfare state if religious organizations (Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, others) simply stopped offering their services? By examining public perceptions of the church, changing dynamics of religiosity, and church-state-civil society relations, the volume places these issues in context.