178 Penny Edgell
of rationality, and multiple logics of action, within the field (cf. Friedland and Alford
1991).
Of course, upstate New York is a particular place, and this study sheds little light
on the familism of other religious traditions. It is not very helpful in understanding
the familism in immigrant communities, including the large and growing Latino reli-
gious community in the United States. And it is likely that congregations in the black
church tradition do not exhibit either a nostalgic longing for the male-breadwinner
family ideal of the 1950s, or a ministry so exclusively organized around a nuclear fam-
ily unit in practice. But this community does provide a useful sample through which
to analyze how anchoring schema filter the effects of social changes on local religious
communities’ rhetoric and practices. This suggests that a focus on schema is useful for
understanding larger questions about institutional dependencies, social change, and
the production of ideology.