As

faith communities in the United States grow increasingly more diverse, many

churches are turning to the shared parish, a single church facility

shared by distinct cultural groups who retain their own worship and ministries.

The fastest growing and most common of these are Catholic parishes shared by

Latinos and white Catholics. Shared parishes remain one of the few institutions

in American society that allows cultural groups to maintain their own language

and customs while still engaging in regular intercultural negotiations

over the shared

space.

This

book explores the shared parish through an in-depth ethnographic study of a

Roman Catholic parish in a small Midwestern city demographically transformed by

Mexican immigration in recent decades. Through its depiction of shared parish

life, the book argues for new ways of imagining the U.S. Catholic parish as an

organization. The parish, argues Brett C. Hoover, must be conceived as both

a congregation and part of a centralized system, and as one

piece in a complex social ecology. The Shared Parish also

posits that the search for identity and adequate intercultural practice in such

parishes might call for

new approaches to cultural diversity in U.S. society, beyond assimilation or

multiculturalism. We must imagine a religious organization that accommodates

both the need for safe space within distinct groups and for social networks

that connect these groups as they struggle to respectfully co-exist.