Farm Workers and the Churches
The Movement in California and Texas
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5705398 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John Norris (0000-0002-2487-7849, Rollins College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 97 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1164-1165 |
| Publication date | 2011-03-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jaq062 |
| OpenAlex | W2316498319 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
The primary focus of Alan J. Watt's Farm Workers and the Churches is how religion—both institutional and popular—influenced the effort to organize farm workers in California and the lower Rio Grande valley of Texas. Watt begins by tracing the development of the Catholic Church and Protestant denominations in the two states in the aftermath of the 1846–1848 conflict with Mexico. The Catholic Church in both areas was rather weak and spent much of the remaining nineteenth century establishing itself in the urban regions. Only after World War I did Catholics begin reaching out to migrant farm workers, especially in California, with Mexican and Filipino laborers. Their commitment to organizing farm workers increased significantly in California during the 1950s as younger, liberal priests devoted themselves to both the spiritual and economic needs of migrant workers. The Protestant support for farm laborers took different paths in California and Texas. In the former, “liberal Protestantism” as represented by Northern Methodists/Presbyterians and Congregationalists influenced by the Social Gospel, initiated social services among rural laborers by the 1930s (p. 7). Indeed, the growing influence among Mexican and Filipino migrants of such groups as the Migrant Ministry pushed Catholics to become more involved. In Texas, however, Southern Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians were more socially conservative and prejudiced toward their Mexican neighbors. Not until the mid-1950s did these groups begin to turn their attention to the plight of Mexican people, but that attention did not extend to organizing them
Agriculture · Archaeology · Christian ministry · Economic growth · Economic history · Ethnology · Farm workers · Gospel · Political science · Protestantism · Social Gospel · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law
| Citations per year | 0.3 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2016 - 2021 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |