Социология религии_общее (англ.) / Handbook of the Sociology of Religion

with important themes in Catholic, historic black Protestant, and mainline Protestant theology and social teaching. If one accepts, following much democratic thinking from the founding fathers of the United States down to the present, that strong economic polarization contradicts democratic ideals and undermines democratic practices, then this public face of religion in favor of economic justice carries important pro-democratic implications.

Third, scholars of grassroots political culture in the United States have documented the central role of cultural dynamics within social institutions, democratic organizations, and civil society (Bellah et al. 1985, 1991; Demerath and Williams 1992; Lichterman 1996; Eliasoph 1998). More specifically, Stephen Hart (2001) argues that conservative political movements have been much more adept than liberal/progressive movements at doing the “cultural work” to link their priorities to the religious traditions that shape Americans’ moral commitments – despite the fact that, as Hart argues, the religious traditions of American life have at least as many resources for supporting progressive political positions as for supporting more conservative ones. Those most committed to the economic well-being of working people have simply failed to do the cultural work to link their agendas to the moral-religious currents flowing in American history. Hart cites faith-based organizing as the best example of progressive organizations doing this cultural work relatively successfully, albeit with important limitations.

Likewise, Wood (1999) examines how the cultural dynamics within democratic movements strengthen or undermine their political outcomes. He argues that – at least within relatively democratic political regimes – those outcomes are strongly conditioned by the organization’s ability to simultaneously (a) contest dominant political power, and (b) enter into compromise with political elites. Wood analyzes the efforts of faith-based organizing and other democratic movements to balance these contrasting cultural demands of democratic politics. Simultaneously sustaining both cultural challenges of contestation and compromise represents a difficult task; religious traditions represent one source of the cultural resources and complex worldviews necessary for meeting these challenges. Faith-based organizing has institutionalized the organizational relations between congregations and its own federations in a kind of “structural symbiosis” (Wood 2001) that helps it meet both challenges. In other words, from its relationship with congregations, faith-based organizing draws the complex cultural resources that allow it to make simultaneous sense of both conflict and compromise in its political work; in turn, when done well faith-based organizing gives back to those congregations leaders with better-developed skills and a deeper understanding of the public dimensions of religious faith. Thus, when Father Joseph Justice of Santa Ana, California, said in an interview that organizing had benefitted his parish, and was asked whether he would work with faith-based organizing in the future, he noted:

I [would] look for certain things. Are the organizers coming in with an agenda or are they looking for what are the needs? PICO certainly was looking for what are the needs here. And they have fulfilled what they said they would do, which is build relationships and develop lay leaders.

Fourth, faith-based organizing may provide some antidote to a key weakness in civil society in the United States in recent decades: The erosion of American society’s store of “social capital” (Warren 2001; Wood 2002). Social capital refers to the quantity and

quality of ties between individuals, through both personal networks and voluntary associations. Although the concept of social capital continues to be hotly debated, most observers agree that strong social capital allows people to work together more efficiently (for both positive and negative goals). Historically, American society has been particularly rich in social capital, which has provided the basis for political movements and voluntaristic efforts to ameliorate various kinds of social problems. But Robert Putnam (2000) has amassed impressive evidence documenting a significant decline in American social capital over the last four decades; he argues that this erosion of social capital bodes poorly for the future of American democratic life.

Understanding how faith-based organizing may provide an antidote to this erosion requires making a distinction between two kinds of social glue holding people together in society: “Bonding” and “bridging” social capital (Gittell and Vidal 1998; Putnam 2000: 24). Bonding social capital links people within communities together, fostering social trust and cohesion among people within a neighborhood, town, religious congregation, racial or ethnic group, and so on. Bridging social capital links people across these kinds of communities, fostering social trust and cohesion between people and groups on opposite sides of social divides (black and white; Hispanic and African American and Southeast Asian; Protestant, Catholic, Jew, and Muslim; rival gangs in adjacent neighborhoods). Religion has been an important source of bonding social capital throughout American history but, like other sources of social capital, has not functioned as effectively in building bridging social capital – thus, the common adage that “the most segregated hour in America is Sunday morning.” But faith-based organizing in many locations draws people from differing faith traditions, ethnic groups, and economic classes into shared efforts at political change – into social solidarity built on shared democratic endeavor. In this way, it may provide an important source of bridging social capital and (to the extent it helps generate more vibrant religious congregations) it may contribute to rebuilding the store of bonding social capital in lowand middleincome American urban communities.

Fifth, faith-based organizing may compensate for a key structural weakness in American political institutions that appears to have worsened in recent years. Healthy democratic life depends on the flourishing of what scholars call a “public realm” or “public sphere.” The public realm is made up of those settings in which people come together and talk about their common future, the problems facing society, and alternative solutions to those problems (Habermas 1989). The public realm can be seen as overlaying three levels of society: (a) Government settings in which officials engage in discerning “public talk”; (b) settings of “political society” – that is, associations linked to but not part of government, such as political parties, the media, labor unions, and employers or professional associations when they transcend narrow self-interest; and (c) settings of “civil society,” in which people come together for myriad purposes beyond the control of government or corporate elites (Stepan 1988; Casanova 1994). Democracy can thrive where both (a) spaces exist for public deliberation at all these levels; and (b) institutions exist to connect public deliberation in civil society with that occurring in political society and government. That is, thriving democracy depends on institutions providing “upward linkages” within the public realm, from grassroots civil society to more elite social sectors. One diagnosis of the ills of contemporary American democracy suggests that, whereas political parties, labor unions, and other associations once provided such linkages, the various levels of the public realm have become fractured

from one another: Few connections exist between civil society, political society, and government, and those that do exist are primarily used by political and economic elites to project influence downward. Little pressure for accountability flows upward from civil society (see Wood 2002, drawing on Aldrich 1995; Coleman 1996; Wattenberg 1998).

If one accepts this diagnosis, faith-based organizing becomes particularly important as an example of a “bridging institution” projecting democratic power from civil society upward into the “political” and “government” levels of the public realm.12 To the extent it does so successfully and democratically – to the extent it “holds officials accountable” to real democratic needs – it compensates for the erosion of other political institutions that once served this function. It also may provide some model for how democratic activists can begin to build greater accountability into the modern political process more broadly.

Finally (sixth), recent studies of social movements have shown the crucial role of sophisticated and creative political strategy in determining whether such movements succeed or fail (Tarrow 1992; Ganz 2000). Numerous recent works describe the politically creative issue work, alliances, and strategies pursued by various sectors of the faith-based organizing movement, including the previously cited work on the PICO California Project and the Texas IAF Network, Gamaliel in the Midwest and independent organizing in African-American churches in Boston. Interfaith Funders (2000) provides a more movement-wide description of strategic initiatives in this field.

Thus, faith-based community organizing offers inspiration and insight to those interested in the struggle for social justice in the contemporary world. This is true in part because of its scale: As one of the largest and most broad-based movements for social justice in American life, it projects democratic influence in most large American cities, many congressional districts, and several politically crucial states. But it is also true for analytic reasons. Faith-based organizing provides one model for how democratic movements can meet some of the fundamental challenges to American democracy that analysts have identified: The widening income gaps between different sectors of American society, plus challenges regarding civic skills acquisition, the public face of religion, cultural dilemmas of progressive activists and democratic organizations, the erosion of social capital in American society, structural dilemmas of U.S. political institutions, and the challenge of strategic innovation for democratic movements.

CAVEAT

In recognizing these strengths of faith-based community organizing, it is important to note that the field has significant shortcomings as well. Some are rooted in its own history and culture as a movement. The potential political influence of the field is undermined by the inability of the various networks to work together (albeit for reasons rooted in negative experiences in the past); these organizations have historically been

12Despite the similarity of terminology, “bridging institutions” and “bridging social capital” refer to quite different phenomena. The latter refers to network ties between individuals in different social groups. The former refers to an organization-level phenomenon – that is, the existence of organizations and institutions that bridge the gaps across different vertical levels of the public realm, thus linking them into a more coherent and communicative whole.

loathe to collaborate with other democratic efforts (although this has changed in recent years in some parts of the country); some organizers are seen as condescending toward those outside their own organizations; and power and decision making inside some faith-based organizations can be opaque and lacking in internal accountability.

Other shortcomings are rooted in constraints imposed by current American economic and political arrangements. Although better than in many social justice sectors, funding for faith-based organizing is rarely adequate; although it offers professional wages, the field has perennial difficulty attracting sufficient numbers of the multitalented and dynamic people needed for long-term organizing success; and even the strongest statewide organizing efforts cannot begin to project sufficient power to affect the vast flows of financial capital that determine the life chances of working families in the global economy. Yet, at the margins of those vast flows of global capital, faithbased organizing offers a tool for promoting democratic engagement and improving the quality of life of working families in ways that matter – and matter profoundly for those living without good jobs, health insurance, decent housing, excellent schools, or clean air and water.

THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE

What, then, do we know regarding the contribution of religion to struggles for social justice? Religion can help provide some of the things every social movement needs: People to help lead the movement; material resources such as money, phones, meeting space, and so on; and social capital and organizational structures that facilitate mobilization. Religion represents one among many possible sources for all these. More specific to religion are other factors: Complex cultural resources that can simultaneously undergird both contestation and compromise; symbols, images, and stories that motivate and provide meaning for the struggle (e.g., the Exodus story, the Jewish social prophets, Jesus’s confrontations with irresponsible authority, the Jewish mystical tradition of “repairing the world,” Islamic understandings of the just community); legitimacy in the eyes of the wider society; and a sense of primary community separate from the struggle that unburdens the organization from needing to provide primary social support for participants. Religion, at least under some circumstances, may be especially adept at providing these.

But Bellah’s (1970a) classic statement suggests perhaps the most fundamental contribution of religion to struggles for social justice. He argues that religion, in fostering the spiritual dimension of human life, pulls people out of their embeddedness in the status quo of society, allows them to gain critical distance from it, and helps them to imagine alternatives to current social arrangements. In so doing, religion provides ethical leverage against the taken-for-grantedness that leads people to accept unjust social situations.

CONCLUSION: RELIGION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Although many decades ago it appeared to some observers (Lenin 1929; Gramsci 1957/1968) that the struggle for economic justice in the world would be led by vanguard political parties representing the interests of workers – in isolation from religion and perhaps against the opposition of religious institutions – there can be little doubt

today that such a vision was always an illusion. People of faith are deeply engaged in the struggle for justice in societies around the world, very often (although by no means always) with the official support of their religious leaders and institutions. One model for such engagement, faith-based community organizing in the United States, has provided the focus of attention for this chapter, because of its scale, political efficacy, and organizational symbiosis with congregation-based forms of religion. But whether one looks to Protestants, Catholics, and Jews engaged in faith-based organizing in workingclass neighborhoods of the United States, secular labor leaders reaching out for support from diverse religious congregations throughout the Anglophone world, Hindu untouchables organizing politically in India, liberationist Catholics or reform-minded Pentecostals fighting inequality in Latin America, anticorruption community leaders shaped by the “theology of struggle” in the Philippines, or toward any of a myriad of other examples, religion remains central to struggles for justice throughout the world today. Any effort to turn our societies toward greater fairness for working people – and any scholarly effort to better understand those struggles – must take people’s religious commitments seriously indeed.

a patron saint of Cuba. La Hermita is a place of devotion to the Cuban patron saint, an icon in Miami that was taken from Cuba as a symbolic representation of the Cuban dream of return to Cuba. La Hermita is the first place newly arrived Cubans go as an act of thanksgiving for their safe arrival to the United States. It is also a place where Cubans go and express Cubanidad (Cubanness) that for many is central to the Cuban– U.S. experience because dreams deferred become the Cuban-American reality (Garcia 1996). Similarly, La Virgen de Guadalupe is for Mexican Americans both a religious icon and a symbol of a community’s struggle, whether embraced in the United Farm Workers’ struggle or as a presence in Mexican and Mexican American homes.

In the Latino/a Protestant communities, Latino/a ethnic identity is asserted in the congregational life of the communities. It is also evident within burgeoning organizations in the United States, including Alianza de Ministerios Evangelicos Nacionales (A.M.E.N.), the Hispanic-American Institute, the Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI), Theologies in the Americas. These organizations and the growing number of theological writings read by both Catholic and Protestant Latinos/as have become the cornerstone of what has been called the Latino resurgence of the 1960s and 1970s in U.S. religion (D´ıaz-Stevens and Stevens Arroyo 1998). In fact, “Latino Protestants pushed for much the same goals during the resurgence as their Catholic counterparts” (ibid. 169). These goals were cast, as D´ıaz-Stevens and Stevens Arroyo document, in a historical moment in which religious leaders “announced a mission of restoring and redeveloping Latino religion because it was distinct and nonassimilable to the Euro-American experience” (ibid. 122).

But what is often mentioned as an aside and not told as a central history to the ethnic communities’ experiences are the key roles women played in their communities’ activism. It is often women scholars who uncover that history. Marina Herrera (1994: 187–8), for example, confirms that “Hispanic women religious were the pioneers in waking up the people of God to all that was happening in the Church” from the beginning of the Latina/o U.S. religious experience. The discussion that follows is part of a growing women’s studies literature that seeks to answer questions on the roles Latinas played and continue to play in advancing Latina/o interests, in this case with the support of faith-based organizations. To develop a better understanding of Latinas’ roles within their communities and the challenges they pursue within their communities’ struggles, I take into account Latino/a culture and the role expectations Latinas have to challenge as women.

CHALLENGING MYTHS: FOUNDATIONS FOR LATINA EMPOWERMENT

Within the Latino community, Latinas are celebrated for their place in the family or home and affirmed for being the mainstays of cultural transmission through their roles as homemakers and in raising children and caring for their families (Segura 1991; Zavella 1987). Such views carry subtle and not so subtle suggestions that their identities and strengths mostly lie in their family responsibilities. Yet Latinas are agents of social change, particularly when they engage in community work. This chapter presents a more accurate picture of the Latina sphere of social influence that encompasses both private and public domains and is expressed in social and community settings as well as in the family and personal life. It argues that in both private and public spheres, religion plays an important role as a place to which Latinas appeal for empowerment.

I develop this account by examining Latina activism in which engagement in pastoral/community work is linked to women’s activism, identities, and community roles surrounding a variety of social concerns.

To ignore the broader dimension of Latina religious practice – that is, their place in community or pastoral work – is to fail to recognize the complex ways in which Latinas are active agents of social change, and the variety of roles they play within and outside the Latina/o community. The following discussion, based on my ethnographic research along the U.S.-Mexico border as well as secondary sources, focuses on the important role U.S. Latinas play in both private and public spheres through religiously based community work that often crosses ethnic lines. This activism advances women’s interests, allows them to claim a myriad of identities, and at the same time advances the interests of their communities. Through such work, they define themselves in ways that transcend the socially conventional understandings of them as women and as Latinas.

LATINAS, CULTURE, AND THE SUBVERSION OF PASSIVITY

As suggested earlier, Latinas are not a homogenous group and this discussion is not meant to “essentialize” the Latina experience. I highlight how women’s empowering processes, rather than only affecting women as individuals, can be linked to communal efforts to challenge socioeconomic realities and cultural inhibitors such as patriarchy. By focusing on the cultural context in which Latinas operate, we can better understand why so many Latina women work with religious groups and other nongovernment organizations (NGOs), to empower themselves within and outside the home. A recent study conducted in two Los Angeles communities found that women’s activism grew out of responding to issues that affected their families and that organizing around those issues was nurtured in community networks (Pardo 1998: 228). The activism also became the basis on which they generated broader political involvements. In fact, we learn from Pardo’s study that Latinas “use existing gender, ethnic, and community identities to accomplish larger political tasks” (ibid. 228).

In a study of Latina activism in Boston, Carol Hardy-Fanta (1993) found that Latinas spent their organizing efforts going door to door, talking about community concerns with other Latinas over coffee, and making the gender and ethnic connections that proved effective in that community’s organizing. In my own research on the border through work I did with the Colonias Development Council in Las Cruces, New Mexico, I observed Latinas take on more active roles in their communities after succeeding in creating community day care centers. From day care centers they moved on to participate in other efforts to force local city and state government to build roads and eradicate sewage problems, particularly because these issues affected the lives of their children.

In community work, Latinas challenge stereotypic notions that portray them as passive and submissive. Latina engagement in the home and in the community contrasts sharply with the passivity/submissiveness paradigms that are often promoted in some Catholic Marian devotions or in religious traditions that promote patriarchy. As one indication, their images of Mary can be described as many Catholics might describe God: As Absolute, Infinite, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Powerful, Redeeming, and All-Wise (Pena˜ and Frehill 1998). In addition, despite official Catholic teaching

against artificial birth control, Latinas admit undergoing sterilization procedures and using artificial birth control, sometimes without the knowledge of their husbands. In several focus group discussions I conducted, women admitted coaxing their husbands to get vasectomies. One woman stated:

[I]magine, eleven pregnancies with the rhythm method, I surmise that it doesn’t work too well, does it? My sisters, I don’t know if all of them, but some of them have told me that they went for the “operation,” and I know that some of them have not told their husbands. (ibid. 627)

These findings are consistent with American Catholics’ attitudes toward birth control and sexuality where there is little support for church teaching (Greeley 1989). Surveys show that even among Hispanic Catholics who both attend Mass and take communion at least once a month – a group that might be considered among the most likely to follow the teaching on contraception – 38 percent of all women of reproductive age were practicing a method not approved by the Vatican (Goldscheider and Mosher 1991).

If we extend to the Latina experience what Patricia Hill Collins (1991) argues about African-American women’s empowerment process, understanding women’s culture of resistance helps to dispel common myths of Latina passivity/submissiveness. In taking this approach, we are better able to come to a more complex understanding of how Latinas stand against the dominant ideology promulgated in patriarchal societal institutions – those rooted in the Latino community as well as those of the dominant society. We see this particularly clearly when we look at Latinas’ resistance to their subordination in marriage. Women question religious leaders who advise them to return to abusive marriages for the sake of preserving the marriage (Pena˜ and Frehill 1998: 13–15). My research also shows that Latinas draw from the strengths of the Latina/o community by participating in local faith-based community groups and organizations. In fact, Latinas often turn to their own culture, and not the dominant one, to find the empowerment they need to confront personal, family, and community crises.

Other scholars offer additional insights on efforts to challenge the passivity/submissiveness paradigm. For example, Oliva M. Esp´ın emphasizes the empowered place middle-aged and elderly Latina women have within the family. She observes that:

Middle-aged and elderly Hispanic women retain important roles in their families even after their sons and daughters are married. Grandmothers are ever present and highly vocal in family affairs. Older women have much more status and power than their white American counterparts, who at this age may be suffering from depression due to what has been called the “empty-nest syndrome.” Many Hispanic women are providers of mental health services in an unofficial way as “curanderas,” “espiritistas,” or “santeras,” for those people who believe in these alternative approaches to health care. (1995: 423)

Thus, research on Latinas points to the importance of considering specific status markers (i.e., age, class, gender, and race), in the cultural context of the Latina, particularly if one dimension of community work bridges popular religious practice and community health practice. That elderly women are held in high esteem in the life of the Latino/a community can be gleaned from the migration narratives of Latinas who, regardless of Latin American country of origin, share a common Spanish colonial cultural heritage. This makes their narratives more similar than distinct when it comes to the social

institutions they engage in their daily lives. Challenging the notion of Latina passivity, D´ıaz-Stevens (1993b) describes a “matriarchal core” in Latino/a Catholicism, in which Latinas play important roles as community leaders in performing popular Catholic rituals. Elderly Latinas have taken on some of the roles of Catholic clergy, calling people to prayer, presiding over Christian gatherings on special occasions such as Fiestas de Santos, Aniversarios de Difuntos, Velorios, Novenas, Oraciones de Buen Morir, etc. (ibid. 65). D´ıaz-Stevens argues that: “Upon a closer examination of how power unfolds, it becomes clear that women exercise a productive function in religion – one that subverts and transforms social values” in these community roles (1993b: 61). The roles Latinas play in performing popular Catholic rituals have had an effect in transforming attitudes regarding Latina leadership within the Latina/o community. D´ıaz-Stevens (1994: 243) found that two thirds of young Latinos/as (ranging in age from fifteen to twenty-five years) in New York City said that the person they most respected in the community apart from their parents, was an elderly woman in the community known for her piety and her role as the leader of nonecclesiastical religious communal rituals and prayer.

It is not just elderly Latinas, however, who exercise influence within Latina/o communities. Recent studies show patterns of organized community activism led by women in Latino/a communities that cut across age and immigrant generations. As Mary Pardo’s work suggests, “ethnic and gender-based traditions” are being “refashioned into strategies for resistance” (1998: 232). Much of this activism can be traced to the Chicana/o and Puerto Rican civil rights demands that began in the 1960s. Paralleling the African-American communities’ demands for social justice, Latinos and Latinas took to the streets and challenged the quality of their children’s education, work conditions, housing segregation, voting discrimination, and the overall marginalization of Latinos/as within U.S. society. In fact, according to Alma M. Garcia (1989, 1997), the Chicano Movement (“El Movimiento”), offered a context in which Chicanas could critique their traditional gender roles within the romanticized Chicano family. Latinas saw themselves fighting for women’s rights while at the same time fighting to end racist oppression against the Latino/a communities. Through that experience, Latinas began to realize that they would have to make their own particular demands within and outside the Latino/a community. This realization led Latinas to form their own protest communities, including their current alliances with and participation in faithbased organizations. This politicization is different to the more subtle forms of cultural resistance evident in the roles Latinas play in Catholic popular rituals. As Gamson has observed, “We know from many studies of social movements how important social networks are for recruiting people and drawing them into political action with their friends. People sometimes act first and only through participating develop the political consciousness that supports the action” (1995: 89).

As noted, during the Chicano movement, Latinas were moved to community activism to protest particular discriminatory acts against them in schools, housing, and public places where they were denied entry. In turn, because Latinas were denied leadership positions within their own social movement organizations, women’s marginalization within the Chicano and Puerto Rican movements of the 1960s and 1970s also forced them to confront the sexism within their own ethnic communities. Consequently, Chicanas and other Latinas have formed their own women’s organizations to protest both racism and sexism. Crisis events bring Latinas to social movement organizations and it is there that individual level resistance is nurtured into broader collective