The Religion of Ethnicity by Gary A. Kunkelman

Author:Gary A. Kunkelman [Kunkelman, Gary A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9780429663017
Google: OtSNDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-03-20T03:46:23+00:00

Chapter Seven

THE ETHNIC CHURCH

In his insightful analysis of denominationalism, Andrew Greeley (1972) forwards the notion that ethnic group and religious denomination play much the same role in American society. He suggests that religion’s ability to not only survive, but flourish, is due largely to the ethnic, or belonging-providing, role of America’s organized churches. Greeley’s model can help explain the role of the Greek Orthodox Church in the lives of Bellevue’s Greeks; further, it offers insight into a central question of why the church functions as a focus of ethnicity, despite what sometimes appears to be substantial conflict between church and congregant.

Greeley suggests two reasons for America’s denominational structure (a structure shared with only Canada, Holland and Switzerland). The first, a historical explanation, lies in the country’s early religious heterodoxy that made impossible a national church. The second, grounded in the sociological concept of anomie, posits a “belonging vacuum” that developed with relocation from European peasant villages to American industrial cities. In this vacuum, the church emerged as provider of community. Church membership in the home countries of many of the immigrants was synonymous with membership in society; it was perhaps only natural that the church should continue to play such an identifying role in the new setting. The denominations, says Greeley (1972:3), “emerged as quasi-Gemeinschaft groups precisely because at the same time in history the religious pluralism in the United States made a distinction between membership in society and membership in a church possible… the industrial revolution made quasi-Gemeinschaft groups such as the American denominations necessary.”

The immigrant Greeks, in particular, carried with them a mindset that equated membership in the church with membership in their cultural group; they ascribed to then- transplanted church the continued role of group gatekeeper- regulating admission- as they attempted to recreate the intimacy, security and social support of the village in an otherwise impersonal industrial society.1 According to Greeley, ethnicity and church became synonymous at a very early point in the immigrant experience; the Greek experience supports his suggestion. Given the Greek’s strong ethnic attachment and the role demanded of the church in maintaining and supporting it, it is not surprising this functional duality developed; even today, in the view of some, the church-centered communities continue to act as if they are villages in Greece (Chock, 1969:214).

Greeley suggests ethnicity and attachment to the denominational church are fundamentally synonymous- that both are manifestations of the desire to retain aspects of the peasant village in an urban society. Much as the ethnic group is a “response to the losses man experienced in leaving behind Gemeinschaft society” of the village (1972:112), so is the denomination “a fellowship which is highly important in compensating for those intimate relationships of life which seem to have been lost when the peasant village was left behind,” (1972:114). Yet, obviously, religion and ethnicity are not one and the same, even though they may sometimes function toward similar cultural ends. Further, the denominational church may have to be viewed somewhat differently in a cultural

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.