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Religious Denominations as Ethnic Communities: A Regional Case Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Timothy L. Smith
Affiliation:
Professor of History, University of Minnesota

Extract

Recent studies of the history of ethnic groups in America have produced a growing awareness that the relationships between religious institutions and ethnic identity are more complex than was earlier believed. Three factors, it seems to me, are now hindering our efforts to understand these relationships. One is the absence of an alyses of the wide functional differences between congregations and denominations, the two kinds of institutions which serve the religious needs of modern democratic societies. Another is the con centration of most historical research in immigrant religion upon one ethnic group. And the third is the emphasis upon the history of either rural frontiers or large cities. In this paper, I wish to present the results of a study of the religious life of the Lake Superior cop per and iron mining country, a region in which immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe are predominant, yet one in which the newcomers of each nationality were spread widely through small towns and villages.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1966

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