The Shared Parish: Latinos, Anglos, and the Future of U.S. Catholicism by Brett C. Hoover (review)

The Shared Parish explores an old reality with new demographics, namely parish contexts where multiple ethnic, racial and/or cultural communities dwell under one roof. Brett Hoover defines this experience of multiple dwelling in one facility by distinct cultural communities as “shared” instead of the more frequently used “multicultural.” He proposes that this juxtaposition of distinctness in a common physical space creates a dynamic that suggests more than integration or mixing. It entails a renegotiation of resources, space, participation, and leadership models. This level of interactivity reflects a “sharing” that Hoover contends certainly has sociological implications and even theological consequences. From this perspective, the shared parish offers an alternative means of understanding cultural diversity beyond paradigms of multiculturalism and assimilation. The author maintains that the theological construct of communion offers an alternate paradigm for re-visioning and navigating the tensions between cultural difference and intercultural interaction.

This dynamic interaction, reflective of the new normal, is considered across five chapters and a helpful appendix on the author’s research methodology. The book provides an in-depth study of a particular parish Hoover renames All Saints, a Catholic church in a predominantly Protestant town in the Midwest. Chapter one offers an historical overview of the parish’s various transformations over the years from 1860–2007. Tracing and naming the cultural transitions is an important exercise in remembering the story of the community, a move that might prove helpful to other constituencies experiencing changes. Reflections on “how did we get here” are useful in combatting the amnesia that inevitably impacts static notions of communal identity marshalled in response to changes brought about by shifting demographics.

Chapters two and three continue the descriptive trajectory previously established with specific attention to themes the author considers prominent. Among those examined are conflicting interpretations of social order, the relationship between cultural identity and worship, competing discourses on the meaning of unity by those sharing the parish. These two chapters especially demonstrate Hoover’s role as outsider/insider in relation to his research subject. His employ of ethnographic methodology to tease out the complexities, varying positions, power dimensions, boundaries, and strategies operative in this shared space are clearly on display.

An explicitly theoretical turn occurs with chapter four. The book moves from the particularities of one local congregation to prevailing concepts in contemporary sociology of religion in order to make sense out of experiences of this “shared parish.” Hoover attempts to situate his terminology of “shared parish” as a technical expression of a Catholic faith community that is not accurately covered in sociologists’ preference for the term congregation. How Catholics manage and interact in these contested cultural faith spaces remains an area understudied, and Hoover’s initial foray calls for ongoing critical exploration of similar sites of engagement. To his credit, Hoover does not leap to general or overarching conclusions about Catholic experiences of cultural diversity in parish life based on his study of this particular case, rather he highlights the need for more comparative studies.

In a move that might make sociologists uncomfortable, Hoover includes a chapter that does not disguise his theological inclinations in analyzing the value of his study for addressing cultural diversity in the U.S. Catholic Church. In a certain sense this decision makes the book a helpful example of practical theology. He lands on a theological concept of communion, as developed in a spectrum of authors ranging from the Greek Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas to the African American Catholic theologian Jamie Phelps. He sees in communion a creative way of ecclesiologically comprehending and living unity while respecting difference.

What is strikingly absent in this chapter, are the distinctive voices of Latino/a theologians for whom diversity has been and still is a locus theologicus. In part this might indicate reluctance to engage the complicated and varying positions of Hispanic theologians which include those critical of communion and...