Final Essay

In the United States almost all religions have been imported from other countries. They are introduced into the country through immigrants and having this religious diversity and freedom allows others to adopt the practices and beliefs that corresponds to them. However, it becomes problematic because there is an assumption that when adopting a religion that is not ethnically related to you there not only exists an appropriation of the religion but also the authenticity of the religion is questioned. The coexistence of religion in the United States has led there to be religious traditions outside of the older established religions to be created and the determination of their validity should be determined within each individual.

Religion has become a way of self-representation. Since the United States is an individualistic country, people focus on how they should express themselves. In an article written by Philip Deloria, “Counterculture Indians and the New Age,” he expresses his distaste toward white Americans and how they have come about with their “identity crises” by turning to the Native American culture and believes the white Americans are mocking and ridiculing the Native American culture because they have participated in “faux-Indian” practices.[1] Deloria goes on to further say, “It should come as no surprise that the young men and women of the 1960s and the 1970s – bent of destroying an orthodoxy tightly intertwined with the notion of truth and yet desperate for truth itself – followed their cultural ancestors in playing Indian to find reassuring identities in a world seemingly out of control.”[2] Deloria overstrains the idea that white Americans are so desperate and in search for a world unrelated to the one they have existed in before that he forgets that those “faux-Indian” beliefs and practices are another way of expression and although the white Americans are misinformed about what Native American culture truly is, they are choosing what works for them. In the case of Judaism they have a choice; the choice to be unsynagogued and they have the freedom in how they participate in their religion because that is how they choose to represent themselves.[3] Traditions practiced by outsiders does not make it any less valid than those who had originally practiced them because it has become a way of self-representation and expression towards your beliefs of the world. Minority traditions have been shaped internally because of the external forces in the United States.

The combination of religions and conversion are the consequence of having so many religions in the United States but people seem to believe that the religion that you hold is tied to your culture, ethnicity or race. In recent days, there has been an adaptation of yoga in public schools that brought controversy and should not be practiced by elementary schools students “because they believed the ancient Indian practice had religious overtones.”[4] There is a supposition that what the elementary schools students are participating in relates back to Hinduism, rather than it being a method of relaxation and exercise. It ties in back to the idea that an aspect of a culture or religion cannot be modernized or adapted by another culture to have it be interpreted differently. While in the yoga case one aspect of a religion was overgeneralized to belong to the religion, Yoshi writes about how a religion has permanently become in a much larger sense your race. “It is at these blurred boundaries between race and religion that we find the racialization of religion – a phenomenon wherein the fact of an individual's race creates a presumption as to her religious identity.”[5] Again, there cannot be an adaptation of a religion because there is an assumption that what belongs to one religion or culture cannot be practiced without it being appropriated.

The First Amendment states that there is a separation of church and state, and does not state that religions should be prevented from intertwining with one another. The diversity of religions and the freedom to express them is what sets the United States apart from the rest of the world.

1Philip Deloria, "Counterculture Indians and the New Age," in Playing Indian, ed. Philip Deloria et al. (New York: Yale University Press, 1999), 155.

2Deloria, "Counterculture Indians and the New Age," 156.

3 Lynn Davidman, "The New Voluntarism and the Case of Unsynagogued Jews," in Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives, ed Nancy T. Ammerman et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 55.

4Khyati Y. Joshi (2006) The Racialization of Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism in the United States, Equity &

Excellence in Education, 39:3, 211-226, DOI: 10.1080/10665680600790327, 212.

5Krishnadev Calamur, "Calif. Judge Rules Yoga In Public Schools Not Religious," NPR Blog, July 1, 2013,

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/07/01/197712791/calif-judge-rules-yoga-in-public-schools-not-religious.

Latino Catholicism

A religion that has adopted values and morals from a much larger movement known as Public Protestantism, Catholicism has evolved since the English immigrants first settled into the Americas. Leaning away from the mainstream Catholic ideals, my mother has strayed from traditional aspects of Catholicism because of the culture and ethnicity that has played into the religiosity that my mother follows, which can be said about the American population in general. As a nation that prides itself on its religious diversity, Latino Catholicism was created through the combination of these religious beliefs and because of this both illustrates the common themes of American religion, and shapes my mother's Latino Catholicism.

Protestantism has become a civil religion and much like the rest of the organized religions that exist in the United States, Catholicism has molded itself in ways to fit societal views of religion. One way that can be seen is how much like the Protestants, “Catholics have adopted a leaner and simpler version of the Mass.” [1] As a Catholic, my mother does no different. Every Sunday morning she goes to church to attend her weekly Mass. In regards to revivalism, a common American theme, referred to as the Protestant cultus, “salvation hung on the sense of emotional liberation and peace that believers attributed to the grace of God.”[2] As Catholicism challenges these idea of salvation achieved through faith, my mother's beliefs seem to align to those of the Protestants rather than her own Catholic view. This proves itself to be one of the complexities, where even though the Prostestant views and the Catholic views misaligned with each other, my mother's beliefs match those of the Protestants. Another common theme of American religion is voluntaryism, which Albanese defines as the “basic importance of the Bible, the use of Sunday schools to spread Christian teachings, the advantages of pamphlet literature about shared Christian ideas and plans for missionary effort.”[3] Catholicism and Protestant share the ideas when it comes to this theme.

It is denominationalism and combination that has led for the creation of Latino Catholicism. In “The Symbolic Realism of US Latino/a Popular Catholicism,” Roberto S. Goizueta constructs the idea that “the religious practices of Latino/a Catholics represent the enduring 'subversive' presence of a religious worldview quite different from that of most modern (postmodern) Western Catholics.”[4] This explains why some of my mother's beliefs are not the same as the rest of the Catholic beliefs. My mother's religiosity leans toward curanderismo, which is the combination of “the combination of Catholicism, spiritism, and herbalism in the healing work.”[5] She denies the existence of mental illnesses and uses herbs to cure the physical illnesses. The curanderismo has flourished within the Mexican culture which also has an emphasis on the Virgin of Guadalupe. My mother prays to God as much as she prays to the Virgin of Guadalupe. “The symbolic power of the Guadalupana has been well-documented from the time of her miraculous appearance to the present.”[6] Denominationalism has led for the Latino Catholics to have emphasizes that do not parallel to the rest of the Catholic community and challenges the Catholic ideas because they have formed their own denomination. The different worldview that my mother has, in regards to the curanderismo and the Virgin of Guadalupe, is due to the combination that has occurred among Roman Catholics.

Common themes that have occurred in the United States have allowed for the shaping of different religions. Roman Catholicism has been revolutionized, yet there is a pattern that can be seen in other religions as well and has also led to the creation of my mother's Latino Catholic practices and beliefs.

1Catherine Albanese, ed., America: Religions and Religion (Wadsworth: Cengage Learning, 2013), 276.

2Albanese, 280.

3Albanese, 278.

4Roberto S. Goizueta. 2004. “The symbolic realism of U.S. Latino/a popular Catholicism.” Theological Studies 65, no. 2: 255-274. ATLA Religion Database, EBSCOhost (accessed September 8, 2013).

5Albanese, 75.

6Mary O'Connor. “The Virgin of Guadalupe and the economics of symbolic behavior.” Journal For The Scientific Study of Religion 28, no 2 (June 1, 1989): 105-119. ATLA Religion Database, EBSCOhost (accessed September 8, 2013).

Mini Blog: "Counterculture Indians and the New Age"

Summary:

In Counterculture Indians and the New Age, Deloria criticizes a white American commune that uses the stereotypical Indian culture as their counterculture. These White Americans use Indian beliefs and practices as a way to come about with their identity crisis, which in turn is seen as a sort of mocking. To clear up the anxiety within themselves, to find the “meaning of meaning” as Deloria puts it, the commune turns to postermodern tendencies. But in their attempts to “play Indian” they are actually far from living an authentic Indian lifestyle and are even more so playing out the individualistic way of life.

Contemporary Issue:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/fash-track/victorias-secret-native-american-costume-389580

Questions:

1. “Throughout this history, I have suggested that whenever white Americans have confronted crises of identity, some of them have inevitably turn to Indians.”
   Looking back on what Deloria says, do you think that the white Americans were merely expressing their appreciation for the culture and have adapted this way of life because of their crises of identity or is it more of a concern regarding appropriation? Is crises of identity a good enough reason to take up the Indian culture?
2. In this excerpt that we read, why do you think that as the commune was acting out the Indian lifestyle they were supercharging individualism?    

The Road Down Acculturation

The new culture and religion that my mother had come into definitely played into the culture shock that she experienced in her earlier years of living in the United States. But as she continued her life in the States, she began to live her life the way other immigrants have and by the creeds and codes of other Latino Catholics. The willingness to pursue her American Dream in the United States, allowed the acculturation of my mother's beliefs and practices to prove as an example for the interplay between immigration and Roman Catholicism and how Latinos and Latinas have come to dominate the Roman Catholic religion through their population.

Roman Catholicism dates back to when the first Catholics set foot in the United States back when Christopher Columbus brought the first Jewish “New Christians” to the Caribbean and sailed under the flag of Catholic Spain. [1] The first waves of immigrants, the Spanish, French and English, had established the religious institution. “For the Catholic immigrants, space and time were equally consecrated;” [2] Catholicism emphasized the importance of the sacraments and penance. As time went on and other immigrants started pouring into the United States, there were revolutionary movements going on within the religion that began to change how Roman Catholicism worked. Then in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, the Latino immigrants were influenced by the European-American spiritism and Afro-Caribbean religions, while the Mexican-American people were pulled more toward curanderismo, “the combination of Catholicism, spiritism, and herbalism in the healing work.” [3]

My mother has taken part in most, if not all, practices of Catholicism. Traditionally, she was baptized as a newborn, celebrates Christmas, and participates in Ash Wednesday. But most importantly, the sacraments are a major part of her life which is also true for the rest of the Roman Catholic community. The centrality of the sacraments had always been an established part of the Roman Catholic culture, however when it comes to the curanderismo of the Mexican-Americans, my mother has also taken part in that as well. My mother believes that herbs will fix physical illnesses and that mental illnesses are just an out of balance state of mind. In an article by Renaldo Maduro titled “Curanderismo and Latino Views of Disease and Curing” he claims that “Curanderismo is based on a set of values, underlying beliefs and premises – that is a relatively fixed but implicit, often unconscious, notions of disease causation and cure.” [4] Though my mom does not explicitly describe her curanderismo tendencies, she takes part in it every time she uses herbs to cure her sickness and every time she discredits the existence of mental illnesses. This illustrates the postpluralism that has occurred within the United States and because of the Hispanic community.

The Virgin of Guadalupe had become another important religious figure among Catholics, some would call her a “goddess.” [5] Jane Caputi reflects that “her significance to Mexicans, Mexican Americans and others; the subversive powers of her iconography, particularly her special relationships with the indigenous, with women, and with the poor; her sexuality; her relationship to divine and folk figures from other traditions; and her mystery,” but this Goddess can also be found in many other cultures. [6 When my mom goes to church, she tells us to pray not only to God but also to La Virgen because she has become a prominent figure within the Hispanic community. A postpluralistic aspect of the culture that began to flourish during the years of immigrant reform, the Virgin of Guadalupe can be introduced as another historical trend that has made its way to my mother's life.

My mother's religious history reflects the general outline of Roman Catholicism in the United States when we focus in on the Mexican-American population. However, looking at the bigger picture of Catholicism we can also see that postpluralism has transformed the religion by adding curanderismo and the Virgin of Guadalupe. The combination of religions that have been made in the past has made the religion that my mother follows, be how it is today.

1Catherine Albanese, ed., America: Religions and Religion (Wadsworth: Cengage Learning, 2013).

2Albanese, 64.

3Albanese, 75.

4Renaldo Maduro, “Curanderismo and Latino Views of Disease and Curing,” National Center for Biotechnology Information, Internet, available from

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1011018/?page=2, accessed 24 August 2013.

5Jane Caputi, “Goddess of the Americas/La Diosa de las Americas: Writings on the Virgin of Guadalupe,” Atla Religion Database, Internet, available from http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.ucsb.edu:2048/ehost/detail?sid=73750868-827f-41cd-ab20-29762117c4bf%40sessionmgr12&vid=10&hid=25&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=reh&AN=ATLA0000326468, accessed on 24 August 2013.

6Caputi, “ Goddess of the Americas/La Diosa de las Americas: Writings on the Virgin of Guadalupe.”

Blog 1

 My mom, Rocio Herrera, is Roman Catholic but it was not until she moved to the United States that she empowered life by her religion. In Mexico, my mom lived with my grandmother who had only carried on traditional practices of Catholicism; this meaning that my mom had been baptized and went to Sunday school for her confirmation, but her practice of the religion did not go any further than that. It was because there was not much religious following done by her own mother that my mom felt there was no need to pursue it either. It was when she decided to move to the United States that she decided to strengthen her religiosity.

In present, my mom believes religion is a part of who she is. For my mom, religion is the belief in the mutual love that exists between her and the divine higher power; “your life is in the hands of God.” When further questioned about what it means for her religion to be passed down to her children, my mom answered that it is important for faith to be displaced on to future generations because it should be a part of one's identity. This blurs the line between identification and religion and questions the directionality between whether religion builds a person or the person builds upon religion and perceives life through their religiosity. Though the Native American religion is far different than those of the Roman Catholics', there is a recurrent theme of whether there really is a difference with ordinary religion and extraordinary religion because one always seems to be leading the other.

Nowadays, my mom attends church and prays regularly. Her portrayal of religion goes beyond the superficiality of being baptized and attending Sunday school. Yearly, she, family and the rest of the Roman Catholic community come together in church to celebrate Ash Wednesday. She describes that as the day when all Roman Catholics have a priest draw a cross on their foreheads. From that day until Easter, each person is supposed to fast. When I asked further questions about what Ash Wednesday means to her, she became embarrassed and admitted that she did not know what Ash Wednesday is in terms of how it is related to God. However, she told me that it was more of a traditional thing above it all. It is a day when the Catholic community comes together for the purpose of honoring what is right among those who are active participants of Catholicism. Then when I asked her about why she prays she said, “it gives me spiritual tranquility and makes me feel like a better person.” In the Roman Catholic perspective, religion has become a unifying experience communally and spiritually lifting individually.

The turning point in my mom's life for her to become more religious was when she decided to come to the United States. Living in Mexico my mom was too busy working and helping her mom out. It became a daily routine that began at such a young age for my mother but when she came to United States to pursue her “American Dream” she accepted religion into her life in order to feel more secure about herself; She was able to secure her identity, culture and community (creed, codes and cultuses). My mom's beliefs and practices have changed over time because it took one life-changing event to give her a push to become the proud Roman Catholic she is today. The “American Dream”allowed her to establish her religious theology and flourish it as she continues to live and work in the states.