Between Heaven and Earth
Subtitle: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them
Edition: New Ed edition
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: October 30, 2006
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 264
ISBN-13: 9780691127767
Subjects: Comparative Religion; Religious life & practice; Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholic Church; Philosophy; Religion; Religion - World Religions; USA; Christianity - Catholic; American History; Anthropology; Religion / Catholicism; History; Christianity - Catholicism
First sentence: ON THE FIRST SATURDAY of every month in the 1960s my uncle Sally, who has cerebral palsy, used to go to a different parish in New York City or its suburbs for Mass and devotions in honor of Our Lady of Fatima and then afterwards to a Communion breakfast sponsored by that month's host church.
Description: "Between Heaven and Earth explores the relationships men, women, and children have formed with the Virgin Mary and the saints in twentieth-century American Catholic history, and reflects, more broadly, on how people live in the company of sacred figures and how these relationships shape the ties between people on earth. In this boldly argued and beautifully written book, Robert Orsi also considers how scholars of religion occupy the ground in between belief and analysis, faith and scholarship. Orsi infuses his analysis with an autobiographical voice steeped in his own Italian-American Catholic background--from the devotion of his uncle Sal, who had cerebral palsy, to a "crippled saint," Margaret of Castello; to the bond of his Tuscan grandmother with Saint Gemma Galgani. Religion exists not as a medium of making meanings, Orsi maintains, but as a network of relationships between heaven and earth involving people of all ages as well as the many sacred figures they hold dear. Orsi argues that modern academic theorizing about religion has long sanctioned dubious distinctions between "good" or "real" religious expression on the one hand and "bad" or "bogus" religion on the other, which marginalize these everyday relationships with sacred figures." -- Publisher description.