Churches and Charity in the Immigrant City: Religion, Immigration, and Civic Engagement in Miami

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research was part of the Pew Charitable Trusts and its Gateway Cities Initiative . We gratefully acknowledge the Trusts’ support and particularly that of Kimon Sargeant, our program officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Sponsored Research office at Florida International University, then directed by Tom Breslin, provided critical financial support in the form of stipends for the graduate research assistants, some of whom not only produced masters’ theses, but also became authors of chapters in this volume. Numerous church leaders, organizations, and congregants helped us tremendously. We would like to single out Bishops Augustín Román and Thomas Wenski for the extensive time they spent with us. Rick and Yvonne Sawyer of the Family and Children Faith Coalition in Miami were also exceptionally helpful. We appreciate the generous help and hospitality we received from the congregations at Emmanuel Apostolic Church and Christ the King Catholic Church in Perrine. We owe a special debt of gratitude to Ricky Sant, the leader of Trinidad Catholic Community at Christ the King, and its diligent and pious members. Greg Bowe gave us access to the Florida International University freshmen who constitute the sample for our survey research reported in chapter . We would like to express our profound thanks to the congregants and leaders of the specific churches and communities where we worked: the Catholic churches, St. Agatha, Our Lady of Divine Providence, San Juan Bosco, Notre Dame d’Haiti, Christ the King, and St. Ann Mission; the Protestant churches, Sierra Norwood Baptist, the Episcopal Church of the Ascension, Emmanuel Apostolic, Monument of Faith, First Born Christian Center, Unity Light of the World, Sweet Home Missionary Baptist, the Refugees’ Seventh-Day Adventist, and the Disciples Nazarene; the West Perrine Christian Association, the advocates for Virginia Key, and the Richmond Heights Tree Planting Project. All were unfailingly welcoming and generous toward us. In the early stages of this project numerous colleagues and students at Florida International University provided important assistance. Emmanuel Eugene helped us in the Haitian community. Karla Mendieta assisted in various Hispanic communities. Ikam Acosta worked on the religious aspects of the Elian Gonzalez case. Carol Hoffman-Guzman provided feedback on our research design. Sung Shik Kim helped with Seventh-Day Adventist congregations. Also numerous students helped with the mapping, including Audrey Gelin, Felicia Ingram, Ninette Rodriguez, Nathalie Franco, and an undergraduate class of Terry Rey. We express our gratitude not only to all of these people, but also to the hundreds of religious and lay leaders with whom we spoke. The map in chapter  was produced by Marcos Feldman. Jennifer Wolfe worked on earlier versions of the map. Through this all Carol Dutton Stepick was project coordinator. She guided all the field research, including the massive mapping task described in the methodology, plus she took care of the innumerable bureaucratic tasks required to make a large project succeed. She also did a very thorough, careful editing of the manuscript, which undoubtedly helped make it much more readable. Without her, this project never would have moved forward. Fred Kniss and Paul Numrich kindly provided a pre-publication copy of their book Sacred Assemblies and Civic Engagement: How Religion Matters for America’s Newest Immigrants that significantly helped us with our theoretical framework. Fred Kniss was also especially helpful in addressing issues concerning the photos during the final stages of manuscript preparation. Two anonymous external reviewers provided important feedback that helped focus and organize the manuscript . The book is undoubtedly better because of them. Adi Hovav has provided invaluable assistance as our editor at Rutgers University Press and Connie Rey’s skills and brave spirit were a blessing to this project. Through support from the Pew Charitable Trusts, Jerry Berndt came to Miami and photographed in many of the congregations in which we worked. His photographs provide an insight that we could not provide otherwise. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS viii Churches and Charity in the Immigrant City ...