Gods of the city : religion and the American urban landscape

Author(s)

• Orsi, Robert A.

Bibliographic Information

Gods of the city : religion and the American urban landscape

edited by Robert A. Orsi

（Religion in North America）

Indiana University Press, 1999

• : pbk

Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

: pbk ISBN 9780253212764

Description

"Fascinating insights into modern urban religious practice make Orsi's collection a must-read." -Publishers Weekly "The essays provide insight into the cultural creativity, reinterpretation of worship and religious ingenuity of city people over the last 50 years." -Library Journal "At last, a major dissection of the great mystery in modern American life-how religion and spirituality prospered amidst industrialization, urbanization, and rampant technological change after 1880!" -Jon Butler, Yale University "Urban religion" strikes many as an oxymoron. How can religion thrive in the alienated, secular, fast-paced, and materialistic world of the modern, Western city? The authors in this collection believe that cities not only can provide the settings for religious expression, but also are material to the experiences which give rise to those religious expressions. In this book, they explore the distinctly urban forms of religious experience and practice that have developed in relation to the spaces, social conditions, and history of American cities.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Crossing the City Line Robert A. Orsi 1. Libations on Linoleum: Ecological Dissonance and Vodou Ritual Improvisations between New York and Haiti Karen McCarthy Brown 2. The Hindu Gods in a Split-Level World: The Sri Siva-Vishnu Temple in Suburban Washington, DC Joanne Punzo Waghorne 3. Diaspora Nationalism and Urban Landscape: Cuban Immigrants at a Catholic Shrine in Miami Thomas A. Tweed 4. Altared Spaces: Afro-Cuban Religions and the Urban Landscape in Cuba and the United States David H. Brown 5. Moses of the South Bronx: Aging and Dying in the Old Neighborhood Jack Kugelmass 6. The Religious Boundaries of an In between People: Street Feste and the Problem of the Dark-Skinned Other in Italian Harlem, 1920-1990 Robert A. Orsi 7. Heritage, Ritual, and Translation: Seattle's Japanese Presbyterian Church Madeline Duntley 8. "We Go Where the Italians Live": Religious Processions as Ethnic and Territorial Markers in a Multiethnic Brooklyn Neighborhood Joseph Sciorra 9. The Stations of the Cross: Christ, Politics, and Processions in New York City's Lower East Side Wayne Ashley 10. "The Cathedral of the Open-Air": The Salvationist Army's Sacralization of Secular Space, New York City, 1880-1910 Diane Winston

Volume

ISBN 9780253334992

Description

Urban religion strikes many as an oxymoron. How can religion prosper in the alienated, secular, fast-paced, and materialistic world of the modern, Western city? But much of what is characteristic about American religious life has developed in cities. Pentecostalism, settlement houses, Christian Science, the various forms of modern American Judaism, gospel and soul music, immigrant street shrines and festivals, and the American encounter with the many religious traditions of Africa and Asia, to cite just a few examples, are all phenomena of cities.The challenge of the cities to customary American moral understandings at the turn of the century provoked the development of innovative institutions, theologies, and pastoral strategies in long-established American denominations. Religious idioms, improvised, recreated, and invented, served as media for immigrants and migrants in making new lives for themselves and their children in between the memories of the places they left and the realities of their new homes; in the process both religion and city were changed. The authors in this collection believe that there are distinctly urban forms of religious experience and practice that have developed in relation to the spaces, social conditions, and history of industrial and post-industrial cities.Cities each with its specific geography, social and political history, demographics, and architecture are not merely the settings for religious experience and expression, but materials of them, too. People work on city spaces and realities in their religious practice, as the city works on them. The introductory chapter, Crossing the City Line, establishes the broad historical context for the volume, and develops the theoretical issues and perspectives that orient the collection.The essays that follow offer close-grained studies, ethnographic and historical in method, of the struggles of Haitian vodou practitioners to serve the spirits in the unfamiliar landscape of New York City; the contested construction and interpretation of places of worship by Hindu immigrants in suburban Maryland, Asian American Presbyterians in Seattle, and Cuban Catholics in Miami; the transformation of city apartments into suitable venues for the spirits of santeria in New York and New Jersey; the role of Italian American street festivals in staking out and negotiating the boundaries between neighborhoods, races, and ethnic groups in Brooklyn and East Harlem; political conflict during a Good Friday Stations of the Cross on the Lower East Side; and the transformation of New York city streets into a cathedral of the open air by Salvation Army lassies at the turn of the century. "Religion in North America" series - Catherine L. Albanese and Stephen J. Stein, editors.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Crossing the City Line Robert A. Orsi 1. Libations on Linoleum: Ecological Dissonance and Vodou Ritual Improvisations between New York and Haiti Karen McCarthy Brown 2. The Hindu Gods in a Split-Level World: The Sri Siva-Vishnu Temple in Suburban Washington, DC Joanne Punzo Waghorne 3. Diaspora Nationalism and Urban Landscape: Cuban Immigrants at a Catholic Shrine in Miami Thomas A. Tweed 4. Altared Spaces: Afro-Cuban Religions and the Urban Landscape in Cuba and the United States David H. Brown 5. Moses of the South Bronx: Aging and Dying in the Old Neighborhood Jack Kugelmass 6. The Religious Boundaries of an In between People: Street Feste and the Problem of the Dark-Skinned Other in Italian Harlem, 1920-1990 Robert A. Orsi 7. Heritage, Ritual, and Translation: SeattleOs Japanese Presbyterian Church Madeline Duntley 8. OWe Go Where the Italians LiveO: Religious Processions as Ethnic and Territorial Markers in a Multiethnic Brooklyn Neighborhood Joseph Sciorra 9. The Stations of the Cross: Christ, Politics, and Processions in New York CityOs Lower East Side Wayne Ashley 10. OThe Cathedral of the Open-AirO: The Salvationist ArmyOs Sacralization of Secular Space, New York City, 1880-1910 Diane Winston

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

• NCID: BA42454959
• ISBN:
  • 0253334993
  • 0253212766
• LCCN: 98048338
• Country Code: us
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: Bloomington, IN
• Pages/Volumes: xi, 402 p.
• Size: 24 cm
• Classification:
  • LCC : BL2525
  • DC21 : 200/.973/091732
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : Cities and towns -- Religious aspects
  • LCSH : Cities and towns -- United States
  • LCSH : United States -- Religion
• Parent Bibliography ID:
  • BA00305012