Italian Protestants

Religion, Ethnicity, and Assimilation

Bibliographic Data

ID2247151
AuthorsWilliam H Form (The Ohio State University, corresponding author), William Form
Year2000
Volume39
Issue3
Pages307-320
Publication date2000-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal for the Scientific Study of Religion (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8294 • E-ISSN: 1468-5906
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/0021-8294.00026
OpenAlexW2079394380
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited6

Early in the twentieth century, Italian Protestants in the United States comprised a religious minority in the Italian Catholic community and an ethnic minority in the American one. Because the assimilation of Protestants from heavily Catholic countries is little studied, I examine the life cycle of three Italian Protestant churches in three denominations in Rochester, New York in order to explain why they disappeared earlier than did their Catholic counterparts. When the second generation Italian Protestants attained adolescence, religious identity with American Protestants overrode ethnic identity, accelerating their assimilation. The Italian Protestant churches had become middle-class American organizations save for the use of Italian, a fatal contradiction. By 1960,all three churches had died, but all of the ethnic Catholic and national Orthodox parishes had survived

Art · Assimilation (phonology) · Contradiction · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Identity (music) · Political science · Protestantism · Religiosity · Religious identity · Sociology · Anthropology · Catholicism and Religious Studies · Gender Studies · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious studies