Polish Interviewee: “I wanna tell you one thing that is a peeve in our hearts. We have – since the Spanish people came in here – we have what you call vendors that sell ice cream…It’s very disturbing to us… “Don’t go in front of the church. That’s no place to sell stuff.” Reminds me of in olden times when people made a market out of the church, and Christ came with a bat and threw ‘em all out. This reminds me of that…It’s very disturbing. People laugh at it, ‘Who are you guys? A circus?’… I think that’s terrible.”

– A Polish interviewee speaking unprompted, in an open-ended question regarding her involvement in the parish, about a Latino man who sells goods outside the church. She then handed the interviewer Fig. 1 and said that she had been waiting to give it to the Bishop but gave it to us instead.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Latino street vendor in front of St. Maximilian viewing polish. Congregant (quoted at beginning of paper) taking picture thru car windshield

Full size image

Few experiences are so profoundly able to generate unity or division—or potentially both simultaneously—as that of two ethno-racial cultures colliding. The intensity of such is what often engenders people to segregate around cultural lines when attending religious services (e.g. Emerson and Smith 2001). Since the goal is typically to feel renewed in a sense of togetherness with similar others, experiences of difference within religious communities can result in more impassioned responses than divisions felt in other aspects of social life. Religious beliefs are not always held the same across groups of worshipers, even in the same congregation. We think the result is that religious congregations have a dueling tension to unit culturally divided worshipers or further exacerbate those divisions, or perhaps do both simultaneously in different ways. Thus, this paper investigates the twin tensions of congregational mergers—conflict and community.

Theoretical Background

In this in-depth case study of one organization, two ethnic communities—Polish and Hispanic—exist within the same Catholic parish, due to a diocesan, cost-based decision to merge the two groups into the same congregation. The interviewees describe their experiences with organizational co-location, and their emergent tensions. As elderly Polish immigrants in this religious congregation are increasingly supplanted by young Hispanic families, ethnic conflicts arise that reflect deep divides in cultural and religious orientations. As the vignette demonstrates, conflict—at times event disgust—exists between the two groups. Despite efforts by the parish and diocese to integrate the two communities, their divide makes the church function as an unintentional facilitator of ongoing ethno-religious conflict. This analysis investigates why these divisions persist despite intentional efforts toward integration. We ask: why did this congregational merger essentially fail? Why are the two communities—who might otherwise be in solidarity in their similar faith tradition—experiencing their shared walls instead as a container of conflict, even moral disdain?

Community

Congregations in the U.S. provide an important source of community and are often the primary means through which Americans socially and publically engage (Putnam and Campbell 2012; Cnaan and Curtis 2013). As organization specifically focused on bringing people into communion with one another, congregations are a primary site for studying the nature of community (Dudley and Ammerman 2002). For example, Dudley and Ammerman (2002) stated:

In a mobile and fragmented world [congregations] are a spiritual home, a gathering place where caring, trusting relationships are built and nurtured. In a world where outsiders’ voices are often kept silent, congregations invite those voices to speak (p. 8).

Congregations also engage with their external community and remain one of the primary organizations in the U.S. mostly focused on catering to people in their relatively-immediate vicinity (Chaves 2004). McRoberts (2005) and Ammerman (1996) showed the importance of understanding the mutually-affecting relationship between the religious congregation and its socio-geographic context by presenting cases in which local communities profoundly affect and were affected by their local religious congregation. Drawing on this lineage, we here investigate the social and historical context of the community in which the congregation is located, coupled with an analysis of the experiences of community that adherents feel with each other and with their organizational, residential, and spiritual neighbors.

Conflict

While congregations can be sources of community, they can also be fertile grounds for conflict (Becker 1999). Disagreements can result in divisive arguments and even schisms (Emerson 2006). Conflict can reveal the different cultural modes, habits, and worldviews (Swidler 1986; Bellah et al. 1996; Bourdieu 1977) that religious adherents otherwise take for granted, until confronted with people not sharing their same outlook (Becker 1999; Marti 2012). In fact, it appears that some degree of conflict and exclusion of different others may be a necessary byproduct of experiencing community (Evans 2003; Smith et al. 1998). This indicates the occasion for conflict may be greater whenever the potential for community is increased (e.g. Smith et al. 1998). Due to their ability to bind and unite, congregations are thus fertile grounds for misunderstandings, heated disagreements, power struggles, and even scaring battles (Becker 1999). Following the lineage of scholars such as Becker (1999), this study:

Sees conflict as constituting and constituted by the moral order of local religious life, reflecting shared and divergent moral expectations for action…and expressing different modes of authority and commitment. (p. 179)

We thus here also investigate congregational conflicts. Combining these two approaches, we conceive of this case study as providing a window on conflict and community.

Ethnic Transformation

Many religious congregations today face tremendous changes in their ethnic composition, either from residential turnover in the populations surrounding the congregation or through intentional changes to the congregation demographics (Emerson 2006). We know from scholarship more generally that changes, especially rapid turnover, in ethnic composition of neighborhoods, schools, and community organizations can result in a great deal of conflict, resentment, and hostility between the existing and replacing ethnic groups. Due to their mission towards integration and communion, religious congregations are uniquely poised to find unifying ways of merging different ethnic groups, and yet they also harbor enormous potential for conflict and division over sacred ideals and meaning (Becker 1999; Ammerman 1996; Emerson 2006; Emerson and Smith 2001; Putnam and Campbell 2012).

We focus in this analysis on a congregation that experienced integration of a Latino immigrant community into an otherwise majority white, Polish immigrant community. While engaging the multiracial congregation literature more generally, we investigate this specific type of understudied congregation (Latino-white, and Catholic) for two primary reasons. First, the term multiracial implies a joining across black and white divisions and evidences the strong trend in this literature to focus mostly on racial integration, especially in Protestant contexts. While there are many historical and social reasons for this approach (Emerson 2006), there is also a need to better understand multiethnic congregations. This is especially important given the role that congregations play in the immigration process, and the valuable role that immigrants play in congregation processes (Warner and Wittner 1998; Cadge and Ecklund 2007). We view immigration as key in congregational life and study the ways in which an existing, mostly white, Polish-immigrant community is transformed by a merger with a Latino-immigrant community.

Second, we focus on a Catholic multiethnic congregation for two primary reasons. Protestant congregations tend on the whole to be smaller and more numerous, while Catholic parishes tend to be less numerous with significantly larger number of adherents (Chaves 2004). Thus, focusing on Protestant multiethnic congregations captures the picture of what is happening with the majority of diverse congregations, while focusing on Catholic multiethnic congregations captures the picture of what is happening with the majority of diverse adherents. The latter of which is drastically understudied. Investigating Catholic congregations may also offer a countertrend to broader voluntary segregation. Given the choice, many Americans will leave an organization or neighborhood, rather than routinely experience discomfort with dissimilar others (Yancey 2003; Emerson 2006; Lewis et al. 2011). Hence congregations tend to be highly segregated because American congregationalism allows people a plethora of options, with the ability to choose their religious homes based on preferences (Emerson 2006).

Catholic parishes, on the other hand, present a countertrend in being less-selected worship sites. Though not as parochially-bound as in years past, there is still a general tendency for Catholic parishes to be more dependent upon the compositions of their local neighborhoods. Likewise, Catholic parishes are also more likely to be merged by mandate (Emerson 2006), through diocesan decisions to join existing congregations into one. Since Catholics are in general less likely than Protestants to leave their local parish when conditions change due to either residential turnover or mandated merger, Catholic parishes are potentially more likely to retain a diverse congregation once it presents. We think both of these aspects of Catholic parishes allow for an increased possibility of long-term change and integration, while at the same time heightening the potential for conflict and division between potentially less-willing participants who may remain in the congregation despite their discomfort.

Brief Historical Background

Polish immigrants began to arrive in the American Midwest more than a century ago (Paral 2004). Since the 1960s, the flow of immigration from Poland has steadily declined, resulting in the fact that most of the existing Polish immigrant population is now elderly. Polish immigrants typically arrived as working-class farmers who took jobs in industry as part of the industrialization occurring in the U.S. at the time of their immigration (Pacyga 1991). Due to their early exclusion from mainstream America, Polish immigrants often banded together and formed strong neighborhood-based communities. The Catholic Church is integral to Polish immigration (Daniels 2002), and Polish neighborhoods often centered around church life.

The history of Mexican immigration in the U.S., on the other hand, has seen more recent waves of immigrants, with an initial decline and then resurgence. The population of Mexican–Americans became increasingly foreign-born during the 1990s (Koval et al. 2006), and therefore Mexican immigrants are on the whole significantly younger than Polish immigrants. Their increased immigration also occurred while manufacturing jobs were decreasingly available (Koval et al. 2006), and so, unlike Polish Americans, they were more likely to immigrate into migratory farm labor than manufacturing. The decreased stability and permanence (Portes 1995) of these jobs meant that Mexican immigrants were more likely to have higher relocation rates (Gabaccia 2002) and less likely to be represented by labor unions (Katz et al. 2007). Thus, unlike the Polish immigrant story of settlement, the Mexican immigrant story is more about ongoing lack of permanence. Similar to Polish immigrants, the Catholic faith has been an integral component of Mexican–American ethnic identities (Badillo 2006; Dolan 1997), and parishioners often experience their ethnic community through their religious participation (Treviño 2006).

Thus, the Catholic Church has played an important role in the immigration process for Polish and Mexican immigrant groups. For both, the Catholic Church often provided a means of sustaining their ethnic identity within the U.S., and their local parish also often provided a means of forming ethnic communities in their new locations. But considering the differences in heritage, timing, and context of immigration: What happens when Polish and Mexican immigrant groups are united in the same Catholic parish? As one answer to this question, this case study investigates the role a religious congregation serves in integrating, or dividing, two ethno-religious communities merged into the same organizational space.

Methodology

The case study presented here is drawn from the Northern Indiana Congregation Study (NICS). NICS consisted of a total population of all religious congregations located within three mid-sized, contiguous cities in the Midwest (e.g. Herzog and Wedow 2012; Vaidyanathan and Snell 2011; Snell et al. 2009). A survey was conducted in 2007 to aggregate organizational data on all religious bodies able to be identified within the ecological field (n = 269, 98.9 % response rate), linked geographical data, and a subsample for youth ministers interviewed in-person and transcribed verbatim (n = 42). From the population of congregations, four were selected to represent prototypical congregations for each of four major religious traditions—Mainline Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, Black Protestant, and Catholic (Steensland et al. 2000). Participant observations of religious services and activities were observed over a year period in 2009 (229 events in 724 field note pages). In-person interviews were conducted to assess organizational practices related to: (1) financial and voluntary giving and (2) youth activities. Pastors, financial officers, youth participants, parents of participating youth, and numerous other congregation members were interviewed in a 62-question involvement, 61-question financial officer guide, 97-question youth, or 97-question parent of youth interview guide—depending upon roles.

Case Study Selection

In the current analysis, we focus on an in-depth case study of one of the churches in the final phases of the NICS project. The case study is of a Roman Catholic parish with approximately 2,000 parishioners. This parish was a historically Polish community who mostly immigrated prior to the 1960s and 1970s. The parish was built by the parents of the current generation of Polish-origin congregants who remain in the church. This population is aging and is not being replaced by either a new wave of immigrants from Poland or a new generation of Polish-origin parishioners, due to their children moving out of the area. Thus, the size of the congregation diminished markedly over the last several decades, and the Catholic Diocese decided to merge in another local parish that was experiencing financial troubles.

The merged parish was composed entirely of Hispanic-origin congregants, the vast majority of whom had migrated to the U.S. from México beginning in the 1990s and continuing to present. The merger was decided upon by the diocese and occurred somewhat suddenly. The congregants of the second, Mexican immigrant parish were given notice 1 day that their church was closed, and they would need to move to the Polish-origin parish. A ceremonial procession was held in which the Bishop walked the Hispanic congregants from their previous parish to the new parish, where they were met by the Polish-origin congregants. A few meetings were held prior to and immediately following this event to discuss the merger of the groups, and some attempts have been made by parish leaders since then to integrate the two.

We began studying the parish, here named “St. Maximilian,” approximately 6 years after the merger, during the latter half of 2008 and the first half of 2009. We studied this parish through a combination of content analysis, participant observations, and in-person interviews. A total of 71 events were observed in this congregation, with a combined 217 recorded pages in field notes. In-person interviews with congregation members were conducted in Spanish and in English with a total of 59 respondents with 81.9 % of congregants invited for interviews agreeing to participate. The interviews consisted of one priest, one youth leader, 32 congregation members, 15 youth group members, and 10 parents of participating youth who were also congregation members. Congregation members were selected as a stratified random sample in order to interview congregants with varying levels of church participation and demographics. Some long-standing congregation members were also interviewed specifically about church history. Interviews lasted an average of 1 h and were recorded, transcribed, and translated.

Analyses Procedures

The findings that follow are garnered from our in-depth attention to emergent themes that we discovered during the course of our data collection and analysis. Using Atlas.ti for coding schemes, we were initially searching for themes related to congregational involvement and youth activities, but discovered in the process the themes of ethnic tensions, conflict, and community in this paper. After discovering these themes, we then systematically investigated explanations for them in interview transcripts, our field notes, and organizational documents. We did not enter this congregation intending to study, or even with knowledge of, its merger. In fact, we think one of the findings itself is that the congregational leaders spoke to us not at all about these matters at first. It was only after having observed for half a year, and having interviewed numerous congregation members, that we became acutely aware of the ethnic tensions which remained salient for the members, but which we had heard not a great deal explicitly about from the congregation leaders. They had described the population composition to us, especially the Latino-white and transformation of which group composed the majority population within recent years. However, it was only after we probed, subsequent to learning from congregant members, that the leaders shared with us their reflections on merger.

Results

The results of this in-depth case study are summarized below through (a) a description of ethno-religious conflicts and followed by (b) comparative analyses of demographics, historical sensibilities, social class orientations, residency, the Church, faith and worship, religious giving, and tradition toward explaining the existence of these conflicts. We systematically analyzed what organizational, historical, and cultural factors help explain why this congregational merger went so awry. We here ask: Why did these two ethnic groups exist in their co-location as divided, perhaps even more segregated, than two groups who would have otherwise been strangers to one another? How did such intense conflict exist and persist in what was intended to be a shared religious community? Our answers, in response to theirs, are summarize in the following.

Ethno-Religious Conflict

First, we describe the conflicts. The two groups—white, mostly Polish and Latino, mostly Mexican—remained nearly entirely unintegrated at the time of our study, with a high degree of salient tension and conflict in the way they talked about each other. For example, a Polish parishioner stated, “I have a problem right now with the Hispanic people. Their priorities are all mixed up…I know when my ancestors came here, they, from what I hear, did not have all these luxuries.” Complaints such as these were not uncommon among the Polish parishioners, and clear stereotypes were present in their characterization of the Latino congregants. In addition, the Hispanic group typically had a more lively style of worshipping and gathering, which often offended many of the Polish parishioners. One Polish parishioner stated:

Right after a Hispanic mass, these people stand in the church and laugh and carry on. That to me is the house of God, period. And in the house of God, you go there to pray, to respect the house of God, not to listen to all this chatter and laughter.

This Polish parishioner views the Hispanic parishioners as being disrespectful to the Church and goes on to tell us about how she handles it:

Finally one Sunday it got to me. I stood up, and I turned around. And I said, “Would you please respect this as the house of God? I don’t want to hear your gossiping! You want to talk, go outside and talk!” Well, I got a dirty look every time I went in after that. But these people just don’t show any respect. This is the house of God, respect it for that!

Similarly, some of the Hispanic respondents conveyed confusion over the religious practices of the Polish worship in assisting the priest at the altar. A Hispanic parishioner described:

In Mexico, I didn’t see this, that people could go up there and help with this. There no, that would only be done by the priest or some small child that helps him, or some adult that also helps out, but not women! That has seemed strange to me.

Polish parishioners often saw the young Hispanic families as not taking church seriously because they would let their children run around during Mass, saying: “They don’t discipline their children.” One Polish parishioner stated, “I know people are so angry about these children that are let loose, which is very disturbing.” Another said:

Since the Bishop gave us the Spanish people, we’re very disappointed…These Spanish people, they just let their kids go wild in church; they run around…And it’s very disturbing… They crawl under the pews. They just don’t discipline their children!

On one occasion when the Polish and Hispanic groups were brought together for a parish meeting, a Polish parishioner complained about how one of the kids ran into her:

These kids are just running around and one almost knocked me down. And I said…“Would you sit down? You almost knocked me over!”…His mommy came to me and said “You don’t holler at my child. He is a child!” I says “And when are you expecting to start raising him and behave like he should?” I says, “You start from the bottom when he’s young.” And she says “Well did you have any children?” I says, “Yes, but I didn’t bring them up the way you are bringing yours up!” I was very frank.

Another incident that was brought up in different interviews was when a Hispanic toddler crawled up onto the altar during the middle of Mass. This incident was perceived by many Polish respondents as a blatant disrespect of their traditional faith.

This emergent theme of religious conflict and community caused us to ask: Why did this congregation fail to integrate? What was it about the historical, religious, and cultural trajectories of these two groups that influenced their responses to one another? We often heard confusion in the face of what was perceived to be distinct religious practices, and at times this elevated to the level of moral disgust at what either group perceived to be a problematic religious behavior in the other group. Ultimately, these conversations are about the very heart of what it meant to be religious to these two groups, and the integration they felt with their own ethnic groups as they expressed conflicting tensions in encountering another, distinct, and somewhat unwanted ethnic group’s expression of the purportedly same religion. In the following, we identify four explanatory factors: (1) generational differences, (2) distinct historical narratives, (3) contrasting social and religious values, and (4) perceived losses of traditions by the ethno-religious transformations of the other group’s religious practices.

Generational & Demographic Differences

The Polish parishioners at St. Maximilian are primarily older, with most upwards of 60 years old. They are second or third generation immigrants who have lived in the area all their lives. Most of them spoke about their and their parents’ experiences of working in factories in the city. Across the Polish-attended Masses, there are typically around a hundred parishioners in attendance with seldom more than a few children participating. Alternatively, the Hispanic community is significantly younger, comprised primarily of first and second generation immigrants, mainly from México. Some of them mentioned having grown up in Texas or California before moving north in search of work. Many of them were migrant workers in the agricultural sector. Several hundred Hispanic parishioners attend the two Spanish Masses held on Sundays, typically with a number of children.

Distinct Historical Narratives

Invasion and Suppression

Our interviews with Polish parishioners revealed that their collective historical memory continues to shape their interpretation of contemporary events. Polish parishioners described hardships suffered by their ancestors on account of the various invasions of Poland. One parishioner reported, “Russia, Prussia, and Austria grabbed parts of it. So by 1795, there was no Poland in existence.” Another expressed suppression of their identity:

In Prussia, they were fierce, Germanic people, and they would not allow the Polish language to be spoken either in church or in their homes. People couldn’t speak their language; they couldn’t manifest their religion; and they were really servants of those nations. They had it rough. They were forbidden to practice their customs, and so Poland was non-existent for like 125 years.

It was from such a context that many of their ancestors fled in the late-nineteenth century, seeking in America a place where they could be free to regain their identity. One parishioner reported:

A lot of young people became disillusioned that Poland would ever be independent and free again. And they began to look outside of Poland for bread and freedom. The United States was very appealing…They wrote letters back to Poland saying how wonderful it is here, that the streets were paved with gold! (Laughs.) But they found out when they came here, the streets were not paved with gold, and they would have to pave them!

Coming to America was an occasion to earn a living but also to re-establish the importance of their language and traditions, denied since the invasion. As one respondent put it: “The way that you knew you were Polish was language and religion.” Polish settlers built tight-knit communities, at the center of which was always a Catholic parish. A parishioner told us, “The Poles wanted to stay near a Catholic church, and everybody spoke Polish. Because historically they were deprived of their freedoms, they were very ethnocentric.”

Movement and Displacement

While invasion, suppression, and establishing stability were central themes in the Polish-American story, what characterized the Hispanic parishioner stories was: movement and displacement. Some described being children of migrant workers, who traveled México and later the U.S. in search of jobs. One Hispanic respondent noted:

The Mexicans began to come in as farm laborers probably in the early 60 s. But they were farm workers…By the 1980s, they began to move into neighborhoods. And as the older Polish people were dying off, the Mexicans and the blacks began buying their houses.

Many of the Hispanic parishioners described their religious identity as stability in displacement. One said, “We had moved here some years before from our homeland, so that was a big adjustment to the American culture and everything.” Some Hispanic parishioners interpreted their experience of having been moved from their previous church to St. Maximilian as another source of displacement. One said, “I think it’s historical in some sense. I mean here you’re dealing with a community that has been migrating coastally, from here to here. I mean it has had no sound home, foundation of a home.” Another recounted that their previous church had finally been a home that they were again displaced from, saying: “That was finally one that they could call their home, and then it was taken away. So it was hard for them.” Thus, the historical sensibility of the Hispanic group was typically a narrative of migration and displacement.

Contrasting Social & Religious Values

Stability Versus Transitory Hard Work

Both ethnic communities are primarily blue-collar and working-class, but in distinct ways. Members of the Polish community mainly worked stable factory jobs in the area, having arrived during an industrial boom as factory labor. One Polish respondent described his father’s pay as a factory worker: “They would pay them about 17 cents an hour…So they worked 59 h a week, and they got paid in gold every 2 weeks.” Polish respondents describe hard work and austere sacrifice as being central characteristics of their own experience as well as that of their predecessors. Work, in addition to language and religion, thus formed the crux of their identity. This is perhaps best reflected by a large mural on one of the walls of St. Maximilian, which depicts a scene of working peasants, some of whom look up to the skies to see a vision of Christ doubled over under the weight of the cross. In a circle around this image of Christ is an inscription in Polish from Genesis 3:19: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat food until you return to the ground.” The Polish respondents had a keen sense of hardships suffered and sacrifices borne by their ancestors.

In contrast to the stability of factory jobs that Polish immigrants held, Hispanic immigrants have mostly had transitory and temporary jobs. One parishioner stated, “Sometimes you end up without a job.” And another stated, “There are some that have really good jobs. But, I believe, I can’t say [for sure], 50 % maybe, don’t have a good job monetarily, that earns well.” In the wake of the economic crisis, many Hispanic parishioners are also unemployed. One parishioner described, “There aren’t enough jobs. And if there are no jobs, there’s no money. And people are moving from place to place looking for a better way of life.” Many mentioned moving from city to city, working minimum-wage jobs. Thus, the Hispanic class orientation was hard migratory labor.

Importance of Home Versus Flexible Relocation

In addition to the sense of stability derived from their attachment to their parish and jobs, Polish parishioners also cherished the importance of home. Many of them had lived in the same house for generations, and emphasized the value of cleanliness, orderliness, and taking care of one’s home. Polish immigrants demonstrate this in their criticisms of Hispanic neighbors: “They’re not very neat housekeepers. There’s junk all over the yard and on the porch. Doors are broken down, and windows are busted.” Some respondents recounted moving out of the neighborhood in the 1980s when numbers of Latino and African American residents increased, primarily because of these concerns they shared with us. In contrast, Hispanic parishioners’ orientation to residence is primarily transitory. Some valued being content wherever they were located—they understood their lot as entailing relocation to wherever jobs could be found. One parishioner explained, “They went through the consistent changing, they never had a home.” Most the Hispanic respondents mentioned that St. Maximilian did not feel like home to them: “Even though I’ve been over here for 7 years, St. Maximilian doesn’t feel like home. It still feels new to me.” Thus, flexibility in the face of change was more present among the Latino parishioners in discussing the value of home.

Church as Physical Structure Versus Relationships

For members of the Polish community, the orientation towards the church was primarily structural in the sense of attachment to the building. Several Polish parishioners expressed a strong attachment to St. Maximilian. For example, one Polish parishioner stated, with tears streaming down her cheeks, “I was born here, and they’re going to carry me out the doors of the church. I’ll never leave St. Maximilian.” Many Polish parishioners talked about the role of their ancestors in building the church and of their desire to continue maintaining the church building and the ministries it houses for future generations, “I want to follow in their footsteps for the future generations in making this parish available, and all of the resources that it has given us, to promote those and continue those for the future generations.” The physical structure of the church building was to be respected and maintained to maintain their religious faith. The Polish parishioners highlight their religious attachment as being primarily to the physical structure—the building itself—which is seen as “the house of God.”

In contrast, we found among Latino respondents an understanding of church primarily as “the community of God.” Their emphasis tended to be relational, rather than structural. For example, one Hispanic parishioner stated,

It has to be more relationship-built…I mean because it takes a long time to get some sort of relationship with somebody… Especially if they’re immigrant, because as an immigrant you have this sense of having no relationship with anybody, that you’re an outsider. So you have no responsibility in that sense, to anyone that’s not your own.

The building seemed secondary to the relationships. Several parishioners mentioned not having a stable church back home in México. Others described moving churches repeatedly: “For me, yes, a building is a building. I have moved from México to California, and from California…Who knows how many churches since then! [laughs]” When asked why they attended St. Maximilian, several Latino parishioners said it was primarily a practical matter: “Well, because the other one isn’t there anymore. So, we went to the one that was closest for us.” Many also said that they were not aware of the significant maintenance needs of buildings in the U.S., especially in the North. This was often mentioned as a surprising discovery by Latino parishioners:

Coming from México, we’re probably not aware of the fact that being here, you have to pay for heating and electric and all those things…But I just think that a lot of people just don’t think about it that way, because at parishes [in México] you give whatever change you have, you put it in the basket; it’s whatever you have left. In some parts of México you don’t need heating, you don’t need a lot of things you have here.

Instead, they often described their faith as maintaining relationships. As one parishioner stated, “I think that’s what faith is all about. Faith teaches us that we have to help each other.”

Worship as Solemn Duty Versus Lively Celebration

Worship in the Polish community was often dutiful and solemn. Traditional hymns were sung with an organ and small choir. Despite hymnals in every pew, parishioners seldom sung along. The primarily older demographic and relatively sparse attendance at English Masses also made a quiet atmosphere. Polish respondents emphasized the importance of prayer groups, some of which are no longer in existence. A Rosary Society of about a dozen members had been running for several years, and a group of Polish parishioners regularly gathered to pray a Polish devotional practice. The Spanish Masses, in contrast, were densely populated. These were lively celebrations, led by musicians with drums and guitars. The sound of crying infants and playing toddlers served as constant backdrop to services. Many Latino parishioners emphasized the importance of communal celebration, such as the feast of La Virgen de Guadalupe and parish festivals. They often recounted an annual festival at their previous church, which was large and well-attended. When the Latino parishioners were moved to St. Maximilian, they tried to bring that festival with them. The church complied and held the festival the first year but has not since. One parishioner reported:

They had a festival, and…it was big…The Bishop, the older people, they were a little scared how many people came to this festival. And then the next year they stopped it without, really, no reason…And then they came out with a silent festival. [But] it was…not even like a festival anymore; it’s just, like, “give us more money.”

Thus, the desire for lively worship activities was squelched by the desire for solemn worship.

Giving as Obligatory Maintenance Versus Relational Support

Consonant with their emphasis on the importance of the physical structure of the “house of God,” many of the Polish parishioners insisted on the importance of financially supporting the maintenance of the church. Several respondents mentioned this being an important obligation: “It’s my duty to keep up the church because the church depends on us to give.” In addition, they saw this as a defining characteristic of their identity. One parishioner stated, “The Polish people have always been giving as far as a church. That has been instilled in us from birth, and I can’t tell you how many people have given and given and given, and continue to give.” And another stated, “Especially in the Polish tradition, it’s very important to support the poor, to reach out, the giving of alms.” In addition, Polish parishioners emphasized that the purpose of giving to the church was primarily for its maintenance and needs. One Polish parishioner said: “For the church and the building fund, I give to that. I think they have it once a month or every other month they have this festival fund, which I don’t [contribute to]. But for the church itself, and for the building, I give to that.”

As a result, the Polish parishioners’ strongest complaint against the Latino community was that the latter did not share this value of financially maintaining the church. As one Polish parishioner complained, “I have a friend who was at a Mass, and a Hispanic gentleman was sitting next to her, and they passed the basket. He threw a dollar in and took 75 cents out. You can’t run a church on a quarter! And this is one thing the pastor is going to have to instill in these people.” However, the Latino parishioners had an orientation to giving that was more diffuse, informal, and relationally-oriented. Most Latino respondents described their community as not contributing as much money as the Polish parishioners. One couple noted, “Maybe it’s that we came here, we don’t have much to contribute, because we came to look for a better life. And perhaps we have limited economic resources [that] don’t allow us to give that much to the church.” Nevertheless, many of the leaders and Polish parishioners perceived Latino parishioners as not giving enough and responded with more donation requests. One Latino parishioner said:

They do pressure us because when we need a service, they’re always very strict…When you say, “I want to baptize my child,” then they check: “Have you been turning in the envelopes?” And if not, you have to start turning them in. And [they say] “the Mass costs so much,” and “this costs,” and “that costs.” And if not, [they would say] “If you’re not turning in the envelopes weekly, well, you can’t come here to baptize your child.”

However, Latino parishioners did generally agree with the importance of giving to church, yet, giving did not necessarily entail money, as another narrated: “You give what you can, and I really give very little, but I could contribute in other ways. If you don’t have work, well, you can do whatever to help the community or the church or their programs.”

Latino respondents also spoke about the cultural distinctiveness in their understanding of giving, notably, that they would be more willing to pay money at events such as festivals, rather than make donations to a building. One Latino parishioner said,

[In] immigrant culture, Latino culture…if they cook at the parish festival then they’ll give you the three bucks for it. They will not give you just the three bucks out of their pocket…They don’t understand that mindset [of donating in church]. But when it comes to a festivity, or a dance, or something like that, they’ll be right there spending money.

Another difference between the two communities is the way they understood the meaning of money given to church. This issue came to the fore when a group of Polish and Latino women were working together to organize a fish fry at the parish. The women contributed money to a common fund with which they made the necessary purchases. At the end, some money was left over, and one of the older Hispanic members reached into take back her share. This outraged a Polish member, who berated her for trying to “steal the Lord’s money.” The Latino woman was confused and tried to explain her tradition. She recounted:

I said, In our culture, we take our money back… I say, “I’m not taking the Lord’s money…it’s what we made,” but she would not understand…[We are] poor, poor people…if we need five gallons of oil to do the frying work,…we’ll bring it, and it’s hard for us…But they [Polish] never think of getting anything back. That was a lesson.

This highlights the different orientations each group has to religious giving: pay in for collective efforts and take back what is unused versus making a contribution cannot be taken back.

Losses of Traditions

Loss of Reverence Versus Loss of Participation

A common feature of both groups is insistence on the importance of their religio-ethnic traditions. The Polish members discussed the notion of following in the footsteps of their ancestors, and preserving ideas, practices, and even physical structures that had been handed down to them. Faith was something instilled from birth. Attending church and donating money regularly were similarly duties that had been learned from an early age. They valued dutifully carrying on their parents legacy and keep the legacy of the church. Respondents felt a sense of disappointment and loss that their younger generation had moved away and were not involved with St. Maximilian. For many of the Polish respondents, assimilation into broader society meant losing the stigma of being Polish, but at the same time, this also entailed losing their uniqueness and distinctiveness. They expressed a concern that some of the former traditions were not being taught, as one Polish parishioner said, “There’s things that we were taught that now don’t seem to be relayed in church anymore.” Occasionally, the loss of their younger generations were blamed on the Latino community. As one respondent complained, “Most of our Polish people, they are all old age people and there’s not too many young ones, because they joined other parishes because of the Spanish.” This conflict of worship styles left Polish parishioners mourning a loss of reverence for the church they held so dear.

However, the Latino parishioners also often perceived St. Maximilian as representing a loss of tradition, from a different perspective. Hispanic parishioners expressed concerns about their younger generation—worries about their success in school and in finding suitable careers, and especially about the danger of becoming involved in gangs. One parishioner stated, “My goal would be that my children not lose that religion, that they continue [to practice the Catholic faith], that they get more involved in that religion, that they continue as we were taught.” Another stated, “For us, our children, it’s most important that they learn, that they know the Catholic religion more.” A third said, “Since I was little, my parents taught me the Catholic religion, and I’m teaching it to my children so they continue [the tradition of being Catholic].” Many expressed concerns in assimilating to American culture. One Latino parishioner described:

I think there’s, in this country, there are a lot more distractions. I remember down in México that the attendance to church was a lot more…You see the people here somehow would rather not be in Sunday school, spending it with family, and not going to church.

Latino parishioners often expressed concern that people were participating less in the church here. One said, “We were involved there in México. We come from México. We were involved there, too. There, it’s a little different. Well, the religion is the same, but the traditions there are very different from the ones that are practiced here.”

Many of the Latino parishioners perceived the move to St. Maximilian as representing something of a loss of their traditions and recounted it as a sad event. One parishioner said, “It was a sad day, I remember when we had a pilgrimage from one church to the other one. It was a sad thing, but it’s kind of the reality of that time.” Another said, “Then moving here, it was like you’re coming into someone else’s place. It’s hard to get a sense of belonging into this new place.” A third parishioner described in further detail the loss of a traditional church home:

To a lot of the older generation, that went through the consistent changing, they never had a home…And, just, I mean, to have this taken out from under you. You lose that sense of faith. And what is really the use of contributing if that’s constantly taken away?

Thus, both ethnic groups conveyed a desire to uphold their traditional values, as symbolized by the church, and both communicated a concern that the younger generations would not carry forward the traditions which they had worked hard to pass along from their ancestors.

Both groups also expressed concern that the other group was not upholding their traditional values. The Polish group was conflicted about what they perceived to be a lack of respect and reverence by the Hispanic group: “The Spanish people, their priority is a good time first, and what’s left over, it goes to the church. Now my mother always told me church comes first.” And the Hispanic group was conflicted about what they perceived to be a lack of participation and celebration by the Polish group: “You know, they don’t want to go through the struggle of having a festival, but they do want your contribution.” Both, then, expressed ethno-religious conflict in perceiving the other as a loss of a deeply-held cultural and religious heritage.

Discussion

This merged congregation revealed significant conflicts in this religious community. I-depth case study analysis revealed the importance of historical, religious, and cultural heritages in group-to-group interpretation. It is the ways they live their faith (Baggett 2011) that help to explain the conflicts they experience. The two groups evidenced distinct historical narratives, social class orientations, religious and social values, norms of religious practice, understandings of religious giving, and beliefs regarding sacred traditions. We summarize these in Table 1.

Table 1 Cultural values, heritages, and social statuses
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One explanation for religio-ethnic conflicts in this shared community was the different historical narratives the two groups held and regularly recounted. The Polish congregants described the Latino congregants as essentially having invaded their sacred space—the home their ancestors built. In contrast, the Latino congregants seem to view the Polish congregants as the reluctant hosts of their migration, much like they perceive the U.S. to be a reluctant host of their migratory labor. A second explanation was in the ways the two groups evidenced contrasting social and religious values. They regarded the nature of work as stable versus transitory, home as permanent versus flexible, church as structure versus community, worship as solemn duty versus lively celebration, giving as structural maintenance versus relational support. Nearly everything of value to the two group was distinct from or contradictory to what was valued by the other group. Thus, their distinct social and religious values help explain why this community remains divided. They interpret each other as representing a loss of their religio-ethnic traditions. While they share reverence for their heritages, they do not perceive the other group as respecting their traditions.

Thus, across each feature of their demographic, historical, religious, and cultural values and norms, these two groups find each other to be more strangers than neighbors. They share a common faith and practice that faith in shared walls, but they interpret each other through divisiveness instead of solidarity. Ultimately then, this case study begs the question: What is community? This question seems on the surface to be a simple one. However, like so many other concepts studied in social science, attempts to answer this question quickly become more complex than originally thought. While average Americans tend to have a sense that they know to what the concept “community” refers, sociologists have debated throughout the history of the discipline about how to investigate this complex and yet simple concept (e.g. Blackshaw 2010).

In fact, community in one way or another is at the root of the foundation of sociology, and Kai Erikson went so far as to claim that community is the “most sociological of all topics” (Erikson 1978). From collective conscience, to social solidarity, to social cohesion, to a sense of belonging, to social capital, sociologists have imagined numerous ways of conceptualizing the relational aspects of community. Throughout the long history of community discussions, the debate about the extent to which something geographic must be inherent to the concept of community or whether there is such a concept as “community without propinquity” (e.g. Calhoun 1998) has been at times hotly debated and at others been given the appearance of being coolly settled. Scholars have tried various ways of conceptualizing the potential distinction between a geographic-based community and a non-geographic community, such as community of place versus community of affinity or place versus space. All in all, the result is an obscure notion of what collective social scientific efforts have revealed about the concept of community.

Bess et al. (2002) summarize this by stating, “It is hard to imagine a concept more central to the aims and interests of sociology and at the same time more muddled and misunderstood than the idea of community” (p. 8) and yet then goes on to call it “a foundational analytical concept within the social sciences” (p. 9). Lyon and Driskell (2012) describe this interesting duality of imprecision and importance by stating, “In the social sciences the most important concepts are often among the most imprecise…In fact, in the social sciences there seems to be an inverse relationship between the importance of a concept and the precisions with which it is defined” (p. 4). Nevertheless, it would be inaccurate to conclude that nothing can be made of these important debates about and remaining imprecisions around the concept of community. Rather, much is to be gained by not trying to resolve community and conflict, but instead understanding it as necessarily complex and involving irreconcilable tensions.

One set of tensions endemic to the concept of community is how to understand whether experiences of community have declined over time, or perhaps instead have increased. Wellman and Leighton (1979) aptly describes this tension as “community lost” versus “community saved” or “liberated” and characterizes much of classical community theory as representing the “lost” perspective while characterizing more recent scholarship in social capital, social networks, group identity, and so forth as representing the “saved” or “liberated” perspectives. This debate itself stems from the differing views on how to conceptualize and operationalize community, which necessarily results in varying interpretation on its current and future state. Part of what explains this definitional debate is the ambivalence that social scientists have about the extent to which community represents a good, meaning it is something ubiquitously positive for society (e.g. Tönnies 1957), or instead represents something oppressive to individual freedom that restricts the range of acceptable behavior (e.g. Durkheim 1984).

While many scholars are still entrenched in viewing this tension as a divide between competing approaches to the study of community (Wellman and Leighton 1979), there are strands of social theory that undergird an integrated perspective that views these as tensions within the concept itself. One of the early articulations of this ambivalent evaluation of the changing role of community came from Simmel (1971), who viewed urbanization as resulting in decreased community in the traditional sense and increasing sense of isolation in modern urban dwellers. Yet at the same time he articulated the notion of “web of affiliations” (1964) that led to modern social network analysis. In this, he argued that was has changed is the way in which people associate to form community is not an overall decline in the level of community itself.

This change meant that rather than community being a given from living in a place and being born into specific families and their associated groups, that instead modern people must seek out community through creating affiliations based on identity and preferences. Fischer (1975) continued this approach to the study of community (though he did not often refer to it as such) in his articulations of the urban subcultural identity theory. What Fischer theorized and provided empirical validation for is the notion that in order for people to feel a strong sense of cohesion with a group they necessarily need to define their group in opposition to “outsiders.” The more frequent group “insiders” confront these outsiders, the greater their sense of belonging within an embattled community. The combination of these approaches results in community as necessarily involving the twin tensions of internal cohesion and external conflict.

In this sense, we view this case study as unveiling the twin tensions of community. As the combination of Fig. 2a and b evidence, community is from one angle an integrated whole, in this case a triangle that connects at each corner to former a unified inner space. At the same time, when viewed from a different angle, a community is also a disjointed separation of space. As the Impossible Triangle shows, the view from a different location is not of a connected body, but is rather of separation. Community is both of these, simultaneously. The feeling of integration as a group in solidarity with one another, with a set of shared experiences is particularly heightened in the presence of an “other.” Groups excluded from the community help to affirm the in-group participation of members within the triangle, while community remains elusive to those without. Thus, as the Impossible Triangle visually represents, this case study evidences that community is in the eye of the beholder. Interpretations of each other across distinct cultural heritages and unequal life experiences can intensify the twin tensions—causing simultaneously the experience of greater in-group community in the face of out-group conflict. Thus, the unfortunate reality of idealized community, at least in this case, is a cultural class that heightens material and historical differences, rather than overcoming them to form a larger cohesive religious body.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Top: The Impossible Triangle, a piece of community artwork in a town called East Perth. This angle is represents the view from within the community and is described an illusion of a perfect triangle. Bottom: The Impossible Triangle taken from the view from the road, representing how the community is viewed by outsiders. This is said to represent how the illusion of community quickly disappears when one stands outside the privileged viewpoint and sees instead disjointed promises of a triangle that never connects (Fisher et al. 2002)

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