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- Genre: Doctoral Dissertation
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ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines the encounter of a large cadre of 103 Roman Catholic priests from Ireland and their Mexican parishioners. Scholars have not explored this rich historical juncture. This is the first study to do so. Primary and secondary sources, as well as numerous oral history interviews provide the evidence that supports the thesis that the Irish priests and the Mexican people shared something of a common consciousness, resulting from similar histories, worldviews, and cultural values. This counters the prevailing scholarly opinion which excoriates Euroamerican churchmen of that time for misunderstanding and neglecting their Hispanic flock. Standing apart in this respect, most priests from Ireland--unlike clergy from other backgrounds-- were sympathetic to folk traditions and experienced a synergy with Mexican people which enabled them to adapt and learn from Hispanic communities.
Yet for all that Irish priests and Mexicans shared in common, these pastors failed to see or at least address the social, economic, and ecclesiastical discrimination which Mexicans daily experienced or challenge the systems which kept them subservient. Paradoxically, these clergy accepted Mexican people, but they also accepted the racist structures which marginalized them.
This historical moment is unique for two reasons. In the mid-twentieth century Irish-born priests were ubiquitous and constituted the largest number of Catholic missionaries in the world. Today there are scarcely enough priests to supply the parishes of Ireland. Similarly, in the mid- twentieth century Mexicanos and Mexican Americans were almost without exception Catholic.
Today this can no longer be taken for granted. These shifts presage the end of an era for the Church in Arizona. Nationally, they correspond to the denouement of long-standing U.S. Irish ecclesiastical establishment and herald the ascendancy of an Hispanic Catholic Church.
In reconstructing this history salient themes emerge: ethnicity, religion (official/popular), power relations, prejudice/discrimination, and the discovery of common ground amid differences. This matrix gives rise to a complex crisscrossing of trajectories of Catholics and Protestants (in society), Irish and Mexican Catholics (in the church), priest and parishioners (in the parish). It holds lessons for the future.
This dissertation examines the encounter of a large cadre of 103 Roman Catholic priests from Ireland and their Mexican parishioners. Scholars have not explored this rich historical juncture. This is the first study to do so. Primary and secondary sources, as well as numerous oral history interviews provide the evidence that supports the thesis that the Irish priests and the Mexican people shared something of a common consciousness, resulting from similar histories, worldviews, and cultural values. This counters the prevailing scholarly opinion which excoriates Euroamerican churchmen of that time for misunderstanding and neglecting their Hispanic flock. Standing apart in this respect, most priests from Ireland--unlike clergy from other backgrounds-- were sympathetic to folk traditions and experienced a synergy with Mexican people which enabled them to adapt and learn from Hispanic communities.
Yet for all that Irish priests and Mexicans shared in common, these pastors failed to see or at least address the social, economic, and ecclesiastical discrimination which Mexicans daily experienced or challenge the systems which kept them subservient. Paradoxically, these clergy accepted Mexican people, but they also accepted the racist structures which marginalized them.
This historical moment is unique for two reasons. In the mid-twentieth century Irish-born priests were ubiquitous and constituted the largest number of Catholic missionaries in the world. Today there are scarcely enough priests to supply the parishes of Ireland. Similarly, in the mid- twentieth century Mexicanos and Mexican Americans were almost without exception Catholic.
Today this can no longer be taken for granted. These shifts presage the end of an era for the Church in Arizona. Nationally, they correspond to the denouement of long-standing U.S. Irish ecclesiastical establishment and herald the ascendancy of an Hispanic Catholic Church.
In reconstructing this history salient themes emerge: ethnicity, religion (official/popular), power relations, prejudice/discrimination, and the discovery of common ground amid differences. This matrix gives rise to a complex crisscrossing of trajectories of Catholics and Protestants (in society), Irish and Mexican Catholics (in the church), priest and parishioners (in the parish). It holds lessons for the future.
ContributorsCunningham, John (Author) / Fessenden, Tracy (Thesis advisor) / Moore, Moses (Committee member) / Fixico, Donald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Over the course of more than half a century, Rabbi Dr. Irving Greenberg has developed a distinctive theology of intra- and inter-group relations. Deeply influenced by his experiences in the Christian-Jewish dialogue movement, Greenberg's covenantal theology and image of God idea coalesce into what I refer to as Hybrid Judaism, a conceptualization that anticipated key aspects David Hollinger's notion of Postethnicity. As such, Greenberg's system of thought is mistakenly categorized (by himself, as well as others) as an expression of pluralism. The twentieth century arc of social theories of group life in America, from Melting Pot to Postethnicity by way of Cultural Pluralism, serves to highlight the fact that Greenberg is better located at the latter end of this arc (Postethnicity), rather than in the middle (Pluralism). Central to Greenberg's proto-postethnic theology is the recognition of the transformative power of encounter in an open society. Greenberg's ideas are themselves the product of such encounters. Understood fully, Hybrid Judaism has great relevance for American Jewish identity in the twenty-first century.
ContributorsKleinberg, Darren, 1976- (Author) / Gereboff, Joel (Thesis advisor) / Fessenden, Tracy (Committee member) / Moore, Moses (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation takes the material culture of New Orleans’ Spiritual Churches as its point of the construction and application of academic categories in studies of religions of the African diaspora. Because I am interested in what emic explanations reveal about scholarly categories and methods, a dialogic approach in which I consult practitioners’ explanations to test the appropriateness of academic categories is central to this work. Thus, this study is grounded in an ethnographic study of the Voodoo Spiritual Temple, which was founded and is operated by Priestess Miriam Chamani, a bishop in the Spiritual Churches. The Spiritual Churches first emerged in the early twentieth century under the leadership of Mother Leafy Anderson. Voodoo, Pentecostalism, Spiritualism, and Roman Catholicism have been acknowledged as their primary tributary traditions. This study examines the material culture, such as statues and mojo bags, at the Voodoo Spiritual Temple as it reflects and reveals aspects of Temple attendees’ world views. In particular, material culture begins to illuminate attendees’ understandings of non-human beings, such as Spirit and spirits of the dead, as they are embodied in a variety of ways. Conceptions of Spirit and spirits are revealed to be interconnected with views on physical and spiritual well-being. Additionally, despite previous scholarly treatments of the Spiritual Churches as geographically, socially, and culturally isolated, the material culture of the Voodoo Spiritual Temple reveals them to be embedded in transnational and translocal cultural networks.
ContributorsBilinsky, Stephanie (Author) / Moore, Moses (Thesis advisor) / Astor-Aguilera, Miguel (Committee member) / Bruner, Jason (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Historically, colonizers, immigrants, and enslaved Africans served as carriers of Islamic culture to Puerto Rico, and today, that Islamic element is often unassumingly intertwined with the Puerto Rican culture. Using Bourdieu's concept of habitus as the framework, this dissertation engages customs and mannerisms of Puerto Ricans to reveal the imprint and legacy of Muslim Spain and the Islamic heritage of West Africa in Puerto Rico. It makes a study of the Spanish language to include vocabulary, proverbs, songs, and games that carry vestiges of Arabic language and culture. Most importantly, it also addresses an inherited religious and cultural tradition rooted in the history and legacy of Islam and Christianity and the human experience of cultural and religious phenomena of conflicts within Medieval Spain. Of particular focus, Fiestas de Santiago Apóstol in Loíza, Puerto Rico (a Moor and Christian celebration in honor of St. James, the Moor Slayer) offer a uniquely different expression. The celebration not only displays remnants of cultural and religious practices influenced by several world traditions such as folk Catholicism, Santería, Espiritismo, and Islam, but embraces the Vejigantes character which symbolizes the Muslim. The implications of these celebrations attest to a historically covert Muslim presence or at least a less biased conceptualization by the Puerto Rican people regarding Muslims. Unlike Medieval Spain, where Muslims were deemed invaders from 711-1600's, the religious, cultural, and political history of Puerto Rico does not suggest a deeper legacy of conflict that includes Islam as an adverse religious and cultural tradition.
ContributorsSaez, Lourdes (Author) / Gallab, Abdullahi (Thesis advisor) / Moore, Moses (Committee member) / Ali, Souad (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Evolution of an Eschaton: An Analysis of On the Antichrist (CPG 3946) Attributed to Efrem the Syrian
Description
On the Antichrist (CPG 3946) is an eschatological sermon historically attributed to Efrem the Syrian. Composed in Koine Greek, On the Antichrist is not an authentic Efremic sermon but is attributed to the construct Greek Efrem, often called in the literature ‘Ephraem Graecus’. Sometime around the 12th century, Slavic Christians translated the work into Old Church Slavonic.
As its goal, this study employs On the Antichrist to investigate how religions (e.g. Christianity) employ religio-cultural constructs and either refine, or redefine, them for new audiences and circumstances. To accomplish this, the author transcribes and translates one of the most important manuscript witnesses of this sermon (labelled Ov1), translates it, compares it with other early witnesses, and analyzes the differences between the Greek and OCS versions of the text in order to ascertain the variations in the versions and to posit why such variations might have arisen in the transmission of this sermon. Finally, the critical edition is interrogated to propose a date of the autographic text-form of On the Antichrist to the 6th to 8th centuries.
This dissertation finds that multiple recensions of the sermon evolved from the earliest recension, the A Recension. The Old Church Slavonic recension of On the Antichrist falls squarely within the A Recension and seems to share a common ancestral tradition with the other A Recension manuscripts and help to reconstruct the early history of On the Antichrist. Thus, this dissertation provides one necessary step in preparation for the difficult task of preparing a critical edition of this sermon.
The sermon draws heavily upon 2 Thessalonians 2 and the Little Apocalypse. Two manuscripts overtly indicate multiple meters for the sermon, but two others only hint at such divisions, and the nature of the meters (Aramaic or Byzantine) is uncertain. The sermon itself references no datable historical events. The Greek of the sermon analyzing to a Late Koine/Early Byzantine cusp language datable to between the 6th to 8th centuries. For all the uncertainties and puzzles this sermon presents, the evidence clearly points to at least one conclusion: Efrem the Syrian (d.373) cannot have authored this work, and there is no way currently to ascertain the author.
Finally, this dissertation adduces an argument that Byzantine and Slavic Christians preserved On the Antichrist because of its emphasis upon humility and penitence, which allowed for the sermon to be incorporated into Orthodox liturgy by the 10th century.
As its goal, this study employs On the Antichrist to investigate how religions (e.g. Christianity) employ religio-cultural constructs and either refine, or redefine, them for new audiences and circumstances. To accomplish this, the author transcribes and translates one of the most important manuscript witnesses of this sermon (labelled Ov1), translates it, compares it with other early witnesses, and analyzes the differences between the Greek and OCS versions of the text in order to ascertain the variations in the versions and to posit why such variations might have arisen in the transmission of this sermon. Finally, the critical edition is interrogated to propose a date of the autographic text-form of On the Antichrist to the 6th to 8th centuries.
This dissertation finds that multiple recensions of the sermon evolved from the earliest recension, the A Recension. The Old Church Slavonic recension of On the Antichrist falls squarely within the A Recension and seems to share a common ancestral tradition with the other A Recension manuscripts and help to reconstruct the early history of On the Antichrist. Thus, this dissertation provides one necessary step in preparation for the difficult task of preparing a critical edition of this sermon.
The sermon draws heavily upon 2 Thessalonians 2 and the Little Apocalypse. Two manuscripts overtly indicate multiple meters for the sermon, but two others only hint at such divisions, and the nature of the meters (Aramaic or Byzantine) is uncertain. The sermon itself references no datable historical events. The Greek of the sermon analyzing to a Late Koine/Early Byzantine cusp language datable to between the 6th to 8th centuries. For all the uncertainties and puzzles this sermon presents, the evidence clearly points to at least one conclusion: Efrem the Syrian (d.373) cannot have authored this work, and there is no way currently to ascertain the author.
Finally, this dissertation adduces an argument that Byzantine and Slavic Christians preserved On the Antichrist because of its emphasis upon humility and penitence, which allowed for the sermon to be incorporated into Orthodox liturgy by the 10th century.
ContributorsMcAvoy, Shawn (Author) / Clay, J. Eugene (Thesis advisor) / Moore, Moses (Committee member) / Swanson, Todd (Committee member) / Tueller, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019