What Are We Doing Here? Local Theologies of Mission from a Shared Catholic Parish in the Midwestern United States

Team Members/Contributors

Brett C. Hoover Graduate Theological Union Contact Me

About this dissertation fellowship

This project examines the culturally shared parish as a local response to increasing cultural pluralism among Roman Catholics in the United States. Focusing on one such parish in a suburbanizing small town in the Midwestern United States, I theorize that distinct yet interrelated cultural communities of Latino/a immigrants and Euro-Americans experience and make meaning of their congregational life in response to their particular context, construing the parish’s mission—practical purpose—in the process. Through an interdisciplinary research framework called participatory witness, the project will 1) bear witness to this process as it occurs in the concrete and 2) produce as a result multiple yet interconnected theological responses to the dilemmas about cultural identity created by the intercultural context—in essence, local theologies of mission. I will also relate these local theological responses to interpretations of Catholic tradition from professional theologians and official church teachers. The project will critically combine resources from Christian missiology, congregational studies, and an interdisciplinary approach to culture I have developed from the study of sociologists of culture like Ann Swidler and anthropologists such as Jean and John Comaroff.

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  "'What Are We Doing Here?' Local Theologies of Mission From a Shared Catholic Parish in the Midwest" 2009 Dissertation Brett C. Hoover