Built with Faith

“No one knows the world of Italian American Catholicism in contemporary New York better than Joseph Sciorra. In the five brilliant case studies that make up this book, Sciorra explores how Italian Americans construct, by hand, their religious environment—in their homes, in the streets, backyards, and sidewalks of the city—in a kind of sacred sweat equity. Like the artisans he writes about, Sciorra is a master craftsman, and Built with Faith shows him at the height of his powers.”—Robert A. Orsi, Grace Craddock Nagle Chair of Catholic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies and History at Northwestern University and author of The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1950

Over the course of 130 years, Italian American Catholics in New York City have developed a varied repertoire of devotional art and architecture to create community-based sacred spaces in their homes and neighborhoods. These spaces exist outside of but in relationship to the consecrated halls of local parishes and are sites of worship in conventionally secular locations. Such ethnic building traditions and urban ethnic landscapes have long been neglected by all but a few scholars. Joseph Sciorra’s Built with Faith offers a place-centric, ethnographic study of the religious material culture of New York City’s Italian American Catholics.

Sciorra spent thirty-five years researching these community art forms and interviewing Italian immigrant and U.S.-born Catholics. By documenting the folklife of this group, Sciorra reveals how Italian Americans in the city use expressive culture and religious practices to transform everyday urban space into unique, communal sites of ethnically infused religiosity. The folk aesthetics practiced by individuals within their communities are integral to understanding how art is conceptualized, implemented, and esteemed outside of museum and gallery walls. Yard shrines, sidewalk altars, Nativity presepi, Christmas house displays, a stone-studded grotto, and neighborhood processions—often dismissed as kitsch or prized as folk art—all provide examples of the vibrant and varied ways contemporary Italian Americans use material culture, architecture, and public ceremonial display to shape the city’s religious and cultural landscapes.

Written in an accessible style that will appeal to general readers and scholars alike, Sciorra’s unique study contributes to our understanding of how value and meaning are reproduced at the confluences of everyday life.