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1 I N T R O D U C T I O N Finding Christ and Community in America The Significance of Catholic and Protestant Cursillos and the Fourth-Day Movement The Cursillo Movement in America: Catholics, Protestants, and FourthDay Spirituality is an ethnographically oriented history of the weekend Christian Cursillo movement, the “short course in Christianity,” among American Catholics and Protestants. What is today known interchangeably as the Cursillo (Cursillo de Cristiandad, or CdC) short course in Christianity or the Fourth-Day Christian movement began in 1944 on Mallorca, the largest of the Spanish Balearic Islands, as an effort at religious revitalization for Spanish Catholic men.1 In 1957, thirteen years after their Mallorquín inception, Catholic Cursillos came to American Catholic culture by way of two Spanish Catholic air force pilots stationed in Waco, Texas. From the beginning, the weekend Cursillo movement was geared toward men, to provide them with a place to experience Christ and the Holy Spirit and a setting where their spirituality could grow. For men unaccustomed to showing their emotions, the weekend Cursillo offered the time and space to talk about their personal lives with other men in a safe space. For some, participating in the weekend events was a conduit toward a deeper spiritual life; for others it led to a revitalized participation in church. For most cursillistas—those in 1944 as well as today—making a Cursillo was and is about several things: discovering their potential as individuals, becoming connected to a faith community, and becoming more active members in their church. The first Cursillo weekends were linked to the larger lay-initiated Catholic Action (CA) movement of the 1940s and 1950s that spanned Europe, Mexico, and the United States. Catholic Action predated the Vatican II Council by twenty years; its vision was to motivate laypeople to transform their society via their Catholic faith. Yet Eduardo Bonnín Aguiló, the primary initiator of what is now known as CdC, was critical 2 Introduction of the top-down, hierarchically run Catholic Action. Bonnín and a small group of friends crafted a weekend experience that blended elements of the CA Cursillo and made it more lay-focused and less dependent on Church authorities. They called their weekend experiences “Cursillos for Pilgrim Leaders” and hoped that the three days would encourage men to become Church. The idea of “being Church” was that laymen would embody their Catholic religion and become more proactive in their faith lives. The goal was for Catholic men to claim and take ownership of their faith and to renew not only themselves but their Church and the surrounding Catholic culture. Bonnín and friends branched off of the more ecclesiastically focused and arguably fascistic Catholic Action, formed a weekend of spirituality, and encouraged cursillistas to live a deeper spiritual life. These weekend Cursillos sought to remake Spanish Catholicism. While masculinist-sounding language was used by Bonnín and the men involved in the early weekend Cursillos, these weekends were the inverse of mainstream Catholic Action Catholicism. The Catholicism of Catholic Action was a manly, embodied, pilgrimage-making Catholicism. Bonn ín’s Catholicism was something else—a deeply reflective, intellectual, and emotional experience and faith.2 Since the late 1950s, millions of American Catholics and Protestants and Christians around the world have participated in a seventy-two-hour Cursillo weekend course, or one of its many spinoffs. Catholic and Protestant graduates of the weekend Cursillo claim to be new individuals, refreshed and renewed. Cursillistas seek to demonstrate their new identities by living a life they believe Christ would want them to live. They share a desire to become part of a community of committed Christians who are, in their words, the “hands and feet of Christ.” Catch phrases such as these reflect a common language that connects cursillistas around the world, whether they are Catholic or Protestant. Denominational and theological differences tend to be downplayed for an overarching, common identity as renewed Christians. Cursillistas’ shared language emanates from a yearning for love, acceptance, and community. Moreover, the linguistic markers of “De Colores!,” “blooming where we are planted,” and “reaching the faraway” point to cursillistas’ dissatisfaction with institutional churches. While most cursillistas are churchgoers who deeply love their churches and their traditions, they have wanted more than the theology, rituals, and traditions contained inside their churches. They have wanted more from their churches, their pastors, and from each other. They have called for a new spirituality that speaks [18.117.196...

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