Italian American Pentecostalism and the Struggle for Religious Identity

This is a splendidly detailed study affirming the rich diversity of the religious experience in Italian American communities. Thanks to Paul Palma’s careful research Italian Pentecostalism has become a subject that historians and anthropologists studying Italian Americana will be reckoning with for years to come. It challenges popular stereotypes and scholarly core narratives concerning the relationship of Italian Americans with the Roman Catholic Church, and it forces us to look in a new way at the beliefs as well as the practices among the peoples of Italian ancestry in the Western Hemisphere in the 20th and 21st centuries.

William J. Connell, co-editor of the Routledge History of Italian Americans, Joseph and Geraldine La Motta Chair in Italian Studies, Seton Hall University, USA

The history of the emergence of Pentecostalism among Italian migrants has long awaited a summative account which takes seriously its larger story. Concentrating on theological distinctives and origins in the vast waves of migration which broke upon American shores from the 1880s, Paul Palma has satisfied this need. Bringing piquant insights from oral and family history, Palma describes the importance of the American experiment and its powerful missional outpourings. The core taxonomy (of reformed revivalism, Wesleyan Holiness, and ‘the primal spirituality of the contadini’) is a definite advance in the literature, pointing to the significant work still remaining to be done in Italian language sources. This work will remain for some time a benchmark against which other works will push.

Mark Hutchinson, Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty of Education, Arts and Social Sciences, Alphacrucis College, Australia

Despite a flood of new literature on global pentecostalism, almost nothing has been written in the last thirty years on white, European, ethnically-defined movements. Paul Palma’s groundbreaking book treats Italian-American pentecostals—centered in Chicago—in their trans-Atlantic and inter-American breadth, linking Italy, the USA, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina. Italian pentecostals fought over food, and whether the biblical prohibitions meant that blood sausage was forbidden. The "blood issue" divided astinenza (abstainers) from libertà (the freedom party), and signaled a larger tension between stricter or looser approaches to cultural adaptation. Palma’s monograph complicates and challenges existing black-white—or black-white-latino—narratives of North American pentecostal origins, and, for this reason, deserves to be widely read and discussed.

Michael McClymond, Professor of Modern Christianity, Department of Theological Studies, Saint Louis University, USA

This elegantly written book reveals the unexpected, remarkable and surprisingly unknown story of Italian American Pentecostalism. Paul Palma beautifully depicts the contours and the inner social and spiritual world of a movement peculiarly shaped by ethnicity, race, and class as well as internal theological controversies and dissensions. Born out of a bricolage of folk-Catholic, Reformed evangelical, and Holiness currents, Italian American Pentecostalism emerged in twentieth-century America as a highly mobile spiritually and socially liberating movement. Rich with interviews, testimonies, historically rare pictures, and a detailed analysis of Pentecostal religious aesthetics, this book is one of the most evocative studies of Italian American religious and social life. Theoretically and theologically literate and empirically robust, the book is a wonderful contribution to the study of global Pentecostal and Charismatic movements.

Annalisa Butticci, Utrecht University – Max Plank Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Netherlands

Paul Palma’s research fills a gap in Pentecostal studies; in fact, despite an awareness of the originality of the Italian Pentecostal experience, a careful survey conducted on reliable sources that give an account of the vastness and complexity of the Italian Pentecostal experience, as well as its international diffusion, has so far been lacking. The Italian Pentecostal movement has its own originality in the international Pentecostal setting since its origins. The contact with American Pentecostalism was only initial. Italians set their own line of conduct because of their ethnic peculiarity and, a fact held in common with all of Latin Pentecostalism, were characterized by the strong anticlerical slant resulting from the great opposition they encountered. Palma has the merit of having illustrated and demonstrated these features with a wealth of arguments. We must be very grateful to him because with his research, Italian Pentecostalism is given due consideration within a specific field of studies, and therefore he has given the movement its rightful place among the Pentecostal movements of the twentieth century that have contributed to the rediscovery of the Spirit in the Christian world.

Carmine Napolitano, Principal of the Facoltà Pentecostale di Scienze Religiose, Bellizzi (SA) – Campania, Italy.

This is a splendidly detailed study affirming the rich diversity of the religious experience in Italian American communities. Thanks to Paul Palma’s careful research Italian Pentecostalism has become a subject that historians and anthropologists studying Italian Americana will be reckoning with for years to come. It challenges popular stereotypes and scholarly core narratives concerning the relationship of Italian Americans with the Roman Catholic Church, and it forces us to look in a new way at the beliefs as well as the practices among the peoples of Italian ancestry in the Western Hemisphere in the 20th and 21st centuries.

William J. Connell, co-editor of the Routledge History of Italian Americans, Joseph and Geraldine La Motta Chair in Italian Studies, Seton Hall University, USA

The history of the emergence of Pentecostalism among Italian migrants has long awaited a summative account which takes seriously its larger story. Concentrating on theological distinctives and origins in the vast waves of migration which broke upon American shores from the 1880s, Paul Palma has satisfied this need. Bringing piquant insights from oral and family history, Palma describes the importance of the American experiment and its powerful missional outpourings. The core taxonomy (of reformed revivalism, Wesleyan Holiness, and ‘the primal spirituality of the contadini’) is a definite advance in the literature, pointing to the significant work still remaining to be done in Italian language sources. This work will remain for some time a benchmark against which other works will push.

Mark Hutchinson, Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty of Education, Arts and Social Sciences, Alphacrucis College, Australia

Despite a flood of new literature on global pentecostalism, almost nothing has been written in the last thirty years on white, European, ethnically-defined movements. Paul Palma’s groundbreaking book treats Italian-American pentecostals—centered in Chicago—in their trans-Atlantic and inter-American breadth, linking Italy, the USA, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina. Italian pentecostals fought over food, and whether the biblical prohibitions meant that blood sausage was forbidden. The "blood issue" divided astinenza (abstainers) from libertà (the freedom party), and signaled a larger tension between stricter or looser approaches to cultural adaptation. Palma’s monograph complicates and challenges existing black-white—or black-white-latino—narratives of North American pentecostal origins, and, for this reason, deserves to be widely read and discussed.

Michael McClymond, Professor of Modern Christianity, Department of Theological Studies, Saint Louis University, USA

This elegantly written book reveals the unexpected, remarkable and surprisingly unknown story of Italian American Pentecostalism. Paul Palma beautifully depicts the contours and the inner social and spiritual world of a movement peculiarly shaped by ethnicity, race, and class as well as internal theological controversies and dissensions. Born out of a bricolage of folk-Catholic, Reformed evangelical, and Holiness currents, Italian American Pentecostalism emerged in twentieth-century America as a highly mobile spiritually and socially liberating movement. Rich with interviews, testimonies, historically rare pictures, and a detailed analysis of Pentecostal religious aesthetics, this book is one of the most evocative studies of Italian American religious and social life. Theoretically and theologically literate and empirically robust, the book is a wonderful contribution to the study of global Pentecostal and Charismatic movements.

Annalisa Butticci, Utrecht University – Max Plank Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Netherlands

Paul Palma’s research fills a gap in Pentecostal studies; in fact, despite an awareness of the originality of the Italian Pentecostal experience, a careful survey conducted on reliable sources that give an account of the vastness and complexity of the Italian Pentecostal experience, as well as its international diffusion, has so far been lacking. The Italian Pentecostal movement has its own originality in the international Pentecostal setting since its origins. The contact with American Pentecostalism was only initial. Italians set their own line of conduct because of their ethnic peculiarity and, a fact held in common with all of Latin Pentecostalism, were characterized by the strong anticlerical slant resulting from the great opposition they encountered. Palma has the merit of having illustrated and demonstrated these features with a wealth of arguments. We must be very grateful to him because with his research, Italian Pentecostalism is given due consideration within a specific field of studies, and therefore he has given the movement its rightful place among the Pentecostal movements of the twentieth century that have contributed to the rediscovery of the Spirit in the Christian world.

Carmine Napolitano, Principal of the Facoltà Pentecostale di Scienze Religiose, Bellizzi (SA) – Campania, Italy.

Italian Pentecostalism in the US represents a neglected piece of the varied story of American Christianity. Paul Palma has now offered us the definitive historical account of this movement. His richly detailed narrative brings together cultural and theological factors in a way that grants us a real feel for who these people were and what they stood for. Palma has written about my heritage, and he has done so marvelously well.

Frank D. Macchia, Professor of Christian Theology, Vanguard University of Southern California, USA and Associate Director of the Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies, Bangor University, Wales (UK)