One was the work of a sociologist, Earl Brewer, who, with the aid of a theologian and a ministries specialist, sought by an extensive content analysis of sermons and other addresses given in a rural and an
urban church to differentiate the patterns of belief and value constituting those two parishes.67 The second was the inquiry of a religious educator, C. Ellis Nelson, who departed from a curricular definition of education to
envision the congregation as a «primary society» whose integral culture conditions its young and old members.68 James Dittes, the third author, described more fully the
nature of the culture encountered in the local church.