The shared parish : Latinos, Anglos, and the future of U.S. Catholicism / Brett C. Hoover.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hoover, Brett C., 1967-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Catholic Church.

Church work with Hispanic Americans--Catholic Church.

Church work with Hispanic Americans.

Catholic Church--United States--History--21st century.

History.

United States.

Physical Description:

xii, 299 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2014]

Summary:

As faith communities in the United States grow increasingly diverse, many churches are turning to the shared parish, a single church facility shared by distinct cultural groups that retain their own worship and ministries. The fastest growing and most common of these are Catholic parishes shared by Latinos and white Catholics. Shared parishes remain one of the few institutions in American society that allow cultural groups to maintain their own language and customs while still engaging in regular intercultural negotiations over the shared space. This book explores the shared parish through an in-depth ethnographic study of a Roman Catholic parish in a small Midwestern city demographically transformed by Mexican immigration in recent decades. Through its depiction of shared parish life, the book argues for new ways of imagining the U.S. Catholic parish as an organization. The parish, argues Brett C. Hoover, must be conceived both as a congregation and as part of a centralized system, as one piece in a complex social ecology. The Shared Parish also posits that the search for identity and adequate intercultural practice in such parishes might call for new approaches to cultural diversity in U.S. society, beyond assimilation or multiculturalism. We must imagine a religious organization that accommodates both the need for safe space within distinct groups and the need for social networks that connect these groups as they struggle to respectfully co-exist. Book jacket.

Contents:

Notes about terminology and the identity of persons and places

Introduction: the shared parish

All saints from village church to shared parish

Making sense of a changed world: the strategies of shared parish life at all

Saints

Being apart together: sharing the shared parish

Theorizing the shared parish

Challenging cultural encapsulation in the shared parish

Conclusion: whither the shared parish

Appendix: research methodology.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781479854394

1479854395

OCLC:

863200963