Nancy Ammerman

For much of the last decade, Ammerman's work has focused on American congregations. Her most recent book, Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and their Partners (University of California Press, 2005), describes the common patterns that shape the work of American's diverse communities of faith. Her 1997 book, Congregation and Community, tells the stories of twenty-three congregations that encountered various forms of neighborhood change in communities around the country. Along with a team of others, she edited and contributed to Studying Congregations: A New Handbook.

Portions reprinted in Religion North American Style, ed. by Thomas E. Dowdy (Rutgers University Press, 1996); and The Practical Skeptic: Readings in Sociology, by Lisa J. McIntyre (Mayfield, 2001).

She testified during the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings of July/August 1995. She was asked by then U.S. Senator Russel D. Feingold of Wisconsin regards the reported "allegations of violence and instances of child abuse" that were levied against the Branch Davidians. She noted that these allegations are a common response on the part of society in response to groups with unfamiliar beliefs.

She was one of a panel of academics commissioned in 1993 by the U.S. government to analyze what went wrong in its dealings with the Branch Davidians at Waco. Ammerman's report concludes that neither the ATF nor the FBI took David Koresh seriously as a religious man, but rather adopted the "anti-cult" point of view of deprogrammer Rick Ross. She wrote

In 1984, Ammerman joined the faculty of Emory University. Her book, Baptist Battles, won the 1992 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. In 1995, Ammerman left Emory University to teach at Hartford Seminary. Since 2003, she has been at Boston University.

Nancy Tatom Ammerman (born 1950) is an American professor of sociology of religion at Boston University School of Theology.