The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem

A fantastic book by Orsi! If you like Italian, Catholic, religious or NYC history, then try this out. Not a typical history book. Orsi adds a great mix of sociology, anthropology, psychology, anecdotes and solid research to create a fascinating read.

Robert Orsi's Madonna of 115th Street is a brilliant multi-dimensional research on the meaning of "popular religion" in the Italian community of Harlem in New York. However, to be just, Orsi himself is rather cautious about labeling his study by the term "popular". It is "religion in the streets," Orsi says, that is in the center of his examination: "This study began in a sense of the limitations of the meaning of popular religion and a desire to broaden and deepen our understanding of this phenomenon" (Orsi, 1985:xiv). Robert Orsi raises pertinent and engaging questions regarding the melding of ethnicity, religion, and community values which have implications beyond the scope of the present work. The study of Italian American religion begins with the people themselves as a story of suffering, conflict, and hope intimately related to Mary. The men and women of Italian Harlem, the Sicilian refugees brought to the United States along with their modest material goods their incredibly rich religiosity and devotion to the Marian cult. The latter, unlike in the case of Polish Catholics (Orsi, 1985:xvi), was hardly controlled by the Church structures. This unique feature of the Southern Italian Catholicism defined people's religion as the totality of their ultimate values, their most deeply held ethical convictions, their efforts to order their reality, their cosmology: "This also could be called their "ground of being", but only if this is understood in a very concrete, social-historical way, not as reality beyond their lives, but as the reason that, consciously and unconsciously, structured and was expressed in their actions and reflections" (Orsi, 1985:xvii). Orsi's analysis resembles Durkheim's research on The Elementary Forms of Religious Life who believes that religion is "a fundamental and permanent aspect of humanity". The reality of religious forces is to be found in the real experience of social life, according to Durkheim (Durkheim, 1995:36). Interestingly enough, in the same way as Durkheim finds the birth of that idea in rites, as moments of collective effervescence, Orsi finds the annual festa of the Madonna of Mount Carmel in the 115th Street in the heart of the socio-religious dynamics of the Italian Harlem. Symbol, ritual, and myth - the entire experience of Mount Carmel emerged from and referred back to the people's lives; the men and women of Italian Harlem shared and found themselves in the destiny of symbolic meanings when they attended the festa of the Madonna of 115th Street. In turn, their experience of the Madonna shaped their American destiny.

In The Madonna Of 115th Street, Robert A. Orsi (Charles Warren Professor of American Religious History, Harvard University) offers a seminal and ground breaking study of faith and community in New York City's Italian Harlem. The focus of this treatise is the annual Catholic festival called "Madonna of 115th Street" and how it has both influenced and reflects the lives of the men and women of the neighborhood. The Madonna Of 115th Street reveals a compelling perspective on how religion plays out in the everyday lives and experiences of American Catholics and the formation of a distinctive immigrant community. This Yale "Nota Bene" paperback edition is highly recommended reading and enhanced with a new introduction by Orsi outlining the changes that Italian Harlem has undergone in recent years and the significant shifts that have occurred in the field of American religious history.

This book helped me think in new ways about the place of tradition and authority in the contemporary world. Orsi's reconstruction of the mental and social schemata of the Italian community in East Harlem is a fascinating, compelling story. His research is impressive and his interpretation persuasive. Three cheers for Orsi's "theology of the streets."

To all teachers: Orsi's account of Italian culture and the "theology of the streets" is an excellent source for any church history, or urban history courses, even at the high school level. I teach it to seniors at a Catholic high school in New York City, and they love it. Many are able to identify with the family structure and theology of the Italian community Orsi describes. Some critics of Orsi's work state that he fails to deal sufficiently with the culture-religion that he describes. That is, Orsi himself is uncritical of what many neo-orthodox theologians would consider "magic," not religion. I find that Orsi's acceptance of this "theology of the streets" demonstrates a greater understanding of what Catholicism really means both to its adherants and its hierarchy. Again, a great text for upperclassmen/women in high school and in college. It may open their eyes to a new way of looking at religion.