Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them

Between Heaven and Earth explores the relationships men, women, and children have formed with the Virgin Mary and the saints in twentieth-century American Catholic history, and reflects, more broadly, on how people live in the company of sacred figures and how these relationships shape the ties between people on earth. In this boldly argued and beautifully written book, Robert Orsi also considers how scholars of religion occupy the ground in between belief and analysis, faith and scholarship. Orsi infuses his analysis with an autobiographical voice steeped in his own, Italian-American Catholic background - from the devotion of his uncle Sal, who had cerebral palsy, to a "crippled saint," Margaret of Castello; to the bond of his Tuscan grandmother with Saint Gemma Galgani. Religion exists not as a medium of making meanings, Orsi maintains, but as a network of relationships between heaven and earth involving people of all ages as well as the many sacred figures they hold dear. Orsi argues that modern academic theorizing about religion has long sanctioned dubious distinctions between "good" or "real" religious expression on the one hand and "bad" or "bogus" religion on the other, which marginalize these everyday relationships with sacred figures. This book is a brilliant critical inquiry into the lives that people make, for better or worse, between heaven and earth, and of the ways scholars of religion could better study these realities using the tools of critical inquiry.

Table of Contents:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix INTRODUCTION: Jesus Held Him So Close in His Love for Him That He Left the Marks of His Passion on His Body 1 CHAPTER ONE: "Mildred, Is It Fun to Be a Cripple?"The Culture of Suffering in Mid-Twentieth Century American Catholicism 19 CHAPTER TWO: The Many Names of the Mother of God 48 CHAPTER THREE: Material Children: Making God's Presence Real for Catholic Boys and Girls and for the Adults in Relation to Them 73 CHAPTER FOUR: Two Aspects of One Life: Saint Gemma Galgani and My Grandmother in the Wound between Devotion and History, the Natural and the Supernatural 110 CHAPTER FIVE: "Have You Ever Prayed to Saint Jude?" Reflections on Fieldwork in Catholic Chicago 146 CHAPTER SIX: Snakes Alive: Religious Studies between Heaven and Earth 177 NOTES 205 INDEX 241

About the Author :
Robert A. Orsi is Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America, Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of "The Madonna of 115th Street", winner of the John Gilmary Shea Prize of the American Catholic Historical Association; and of "Thank You, St. Jude", winner of the 1998 Merle Curti Award in American Social History.

Review :
Full of religious experiences that tell stories about the extraordinary meanings ordinary people create in their lives. Publishers Weekly By its very nature, religion deals with our deepest longings and most bitter frustrations, especially concerning our relationships with others. -- Paul Baumann Chicago Tribune [A] compelling blend of personal narrative and scholarly inquiryA... The result is frequently dazzling. -- John T. McGreevy Commonwealth A classic... [A] memorable book [that balances] historical, archival and personal evidence in a rare style of historical auto-ethnography. -- Claire Hoertz Badaracco America Orsi mixes personal family history with anthropological and historical argumentations... [T]he book moves far beyond the study of Catholicism Choice