The Emergence of Italian Pentecostalism: Affectivity and Aesthetic Worship Practices

Editor’s Note: This academic paper by Paul Palma was first presented at the 2013 meeting of the Center for Renewal Studies. Less technical readers may want to start with the more accessible conclusion.

 

Introduction

The early Pentecostal movement expanded among those seeking a more dynamic and vital religious experience. For some this entailed transition through one or more pre-Pentecostal traditions. The first Italian Pentecostals were Roman Catholic converts who transitioned through Protestant and independent Holiness stages before arriving to the Pentecostal movement. The guiding motivation for their progress from one denomination to the next was dissatisfaction with conventional orthodoxy and the pursuit of an intuitive, affective spirituality.

This essay examines the spiritual formation of early Italian Pentecostals. First, I provide an overview of the religious journey of Italian Pentecostals, tracing their progress from Roman Catholicism and Protestant denominational churches, to an independent-holiness context, and finally to the Pentecostal movement. Second, I examine the social psychology undergirding their spiritual transformation. In Vision of the Disinherited, Robert M. Anderson referred to this dimension as the desire for “revivalistic holiness”; the attempt to overcome social and economic deprivation through the intensification of religious piety and affectivity.[1] Third, I address the relationship between affective religious experience (orthopathy) and religious practices (orthopraxis). The crisis experience of Spirit baptism initiated renewal and revitalization, sustained through charismatic fellowship and aesthetic practices. In Fire from Heaven Harvey Cox described Italian Pentecostal theology as being rooted in a primal spirituality including a new appreciation for feminine imagery and participation of women in congregational life. Aesthetic practices were conveyed through hymns, prayers, gestures, and literature characterizing the early Italian Pentecostal movement.

Religious Trajectory of the Italian Pentecostals

The Italian Pentecostal movement formed among a community of immigrants in the first decade of the twentieth century. Italians entered America as nominal and devout Catholics. Growing anticlericalism and distrust for American Catholicism, dominated at that time by the Irish Church, forced many Italians to veer from their ethnoreligious roots. Some ventured to Protestant churches. The first Italian Pentecostals were Presbyterians-turned evangelical Holiness believers. The movement of Italians to increasingly revivalistic churches provides the conceptual framework for understanding the spiritual formation of the first Italian Pentecostals.

The creation of the Italian Evangelical Mission in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century redefined Italian ethnoreligious identity. Beginning as a community of independent Holiness believers, this congregation emerged from the spiritual vacancy created by a neglectful American Catholic Church and the rigid demands of mainline Protestantism. Luigi Francescon and Pietro Ottolini assumed the leadership responsibilities of the Evangelical Mission. Francescon emigrated in 1890 and converted among a group of Waldensians before cofounding the First Italian Presbyterian Church of Chicago. Ottolini emigrated in 1891, converted from Catholicism through an independent evangelist, and later joined the First Italian Presbyterian Church.[2]

Italian-American congregations were fraught with regionalism. A growing number of the Italian Presbyterian congregation were immigrants from Tuscany in central Italy. Longtime members on the other hand were from the regions of northern Italy. Reluctant to observe the denominational requirement for membership, the Toscani left the Presbyterian Church and formed an independent congregation. In 1904 they rented a store-front on W. Grand Avenue known as “the Mission.”[3]

Anderson identifies this Italian congregation with the Holiness churches; a common transitional phase for Pentecostals raised Catholic. He notes the movement of its members from Roman Catholicism and conventional orthodox denominations to a transitional Evangelical phase and a pre-Pentecostal sojourn with the radical outer fringes of the Holiness movement. The penchant of early Pentecostals was consistently toward more enthusiastic religious groups.[4] The Grand Avenue Mission was characterized by authentic evangelical fervor and spiritual ardor. Though growing and mobile, they were forced to relocate continually and remained without formal affiliation. According to Louis De Caro, the combination of isolation, internal division, and both religious and spatial instability, left the Italian Evangelical community in a fragmented state, preparatory to their transition to Pentecostalism.^[5]

Italians were introduced to Pentecostalism through the ministry of William H. Durham. Their reception of the Pentecostal message was embodied in the hallmark Pentecostal experience of Spirit baptism. On September 15, 1907, an exceeding number received the baptism at the Grand Avenue Mission. Italians were readied to start a work of their own.[6]

The Grand Avenue Mission expanded among contadini (peasants). Contadini came from the socioeconomically disadvantaged regions of the Mezzogiorno (southern Italy). The American Bureau of immigration distinguished between Southern Italians (Iberics) and northern Italians (Keltics); a distinction reflecting a nationwide trend that regarded the Iberic southern race as morally, intellectually, and even physically inferior to their northern counterparts. Fewer and fewer northern Italians lived in the urban centers of Chicago as acculturation pushed them away from inner-city slums in search of better living conditions. Showing little regard for the pretentious Iberic-Keltic racial divide, the Mission welcomed contadini. They were also impartial regarding religious affiliation, opening their doors to Protestants and Catholics alike.[7] Rapid growth forced the congregation to move their headquarters to West Erie St. Chicago. Here they adopted the name Assemblea Cristiana (the Christian Assembly).[8] By 1920 Italian Pentecostals lived in every major US city.[9]

The Assembea Cristiana planted churches in Canada, South America, and Italy. Francescon founded congregations among the Italian diaspora in Argentina and Brazil.^[10] Ottolini was among the first to return to the homeland with the Pentecostal message, holding services in northern Italy and Sicily. The first to carry the work to Italy was Giacomo Lombardi, sowing the seeds of the Pentecostal movement among relatives and acquaintances. In 1929 the Ministry of the Interior reported the presence of Pentecostals in 150 localities in Italy and at least 25 public places of worship.[11]

Several Italian Pentecostal pioneers followed the same trajectory as Francescon and Ottolini. Peter Menconi, the first pastor of the Grand Avenue Mission proceeded from Catholicism to Presbyterianism.[12] The evangelist Guiseppe Beretta moved from Catholicism to Methodism before joining the Mission.[13] Massimiliano Tosetto, the cofounder of the first Italian Pentecostal denomination, and theologian Guiseppe Petrelli, were prior members at Baptist churches.[14] The progression of Italian Pentecostals thus followed a fourfold pattern: from Catholicism, to mainline Protestant churches (Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist), to an independent Holiness phase, and finally to Pentecostalism.

Affectivity and the Social Psychology of Italian Pentecostals

The mobility of early Italian Pentecostals suggests that very few, if any, went directly from Catholicism into the Pentecostal movement.[15] The intervening period was characterized by participation in mainline Protestant and Holiness churches. In each instance the penchant was toward more enthusiastic religious groups. The movement of Italian Pentecostals between churches and finally to Pentecostalism was guided by a common motivation, what Anderson called the “desire for greater commitment to revivalistic holiness.” This desire has reference to an affective, social psychological element, present at each stage of their religious journey.[16]

The desire for a deeper experience of holiness was the guiding motivation for early Pentecostals, where the common trajectory was movement away from “staidly orthodox denominations” to Holiness churches. Even for those moving between mainline denominations, the second denomination was more closely aligned with Holiness doctrines and ideals. The transition from conventional denominations entailed a rupture of the status quo through participation in increasingly radical and revivalistic communities. Given the sectarian nature of these communities, upon completing the transition to Pentecostalism one experienced a measure of social integration. According to Anderson early Pentecostals sought “a resolution of the anxieties stemming from [their] social experience, not by clinging to the faith of [their] fathers but by the intensification of the pietistic, emotional, and world-rejecting elements of that faith.”[17]

The spiritual formation of Italian Pentecostals occurred in the context of economic and cultural deprivation. As an immigrant community, more than other Pentecostals, Italians were subject to severe estrangement, separated from ancestral and religious kin. They overcame estrangement and marginality by expressing their social discontent in religious terms. According to twentieth century social theory, the religious zeal of Italian Pentecostals is attributed to cultural and economic marginalization. Sect-church and social deprivation theories underscore the socioeconomic, moral, and psychological dynamics involved in the progress of religious groups. In 1929 H. Richard Niebuhr argued that dissension of sectarian groups from mainstream denominations followed a cyclical pattern. The sect overcomes economic and social repression by redirecting religious austerity to discipline at work and thrift with finances. As socioeconomic status improves, the sect gains respectability and takes on church-like characteristics.[18] The sect becomes yet another denomination and the process repeats itself. Going beyond the economic emphasis of Niebuhr, Charles Y. Glock suggested “deprivation theory” as a lens for comprehending the ethical, physical, and psychological factors in the progress of religious groups.[19] Underprivileged and detached from ordinary support systems, Italian-Americans underwent a crisis of identity.

Italians came to America seeking what appeared perpetually elusive in southern Europe—a respected place in society. Immigrants stood at the bottom rung of the social ladder. Between 1899 and 1910 nearly 2.5 million Italians entered the US. Of this number 84% were from the economically underprivileged regions of southern Italy. Accustomed to rural, agrarian lifestyle, they left Italy with hopes of escaping oppressive taxation and poor working conditions. Some emigrated for political reasons or to evade military service, yet by far the most common reason was economic. Humbert S. Nelli’s study of the first Italian Pentecostal community indicates that those emigrating from central and northern Italy were driven by economic advancement, originating from humble means and lower class areas.^[20]

Italians settled in neighborhoods that “compared unfavorably with the worst circumstances of other immigrant groups.” This reality held especially true for Italians of the first Pentecostal community located on Chicago’s Near North Side. According to Rudolph J. Vecoli immigrants such as contadini from Sicily entered the Near North Side en masse.[21] Discrimination against Sicilians included allegations of social ineptitude and, in extreme cases, Sicilians were blamed for declining property value. Sicilians and Swedes reportedly engaged in “blood battles” using sticks, knives, clubs, and blackjacks. The Near North Side became infamous for the frequency of murders and bombings.[22]

The Italian Pentecostal movement was born in this volatile setting. Through much toil and a renewed faith Italian Pentecostals persevered and made a name for themselves among the urban labor force. By 1910 most found work as general laborers, artisans, or small business proprietors. Yet as historian Grant Wacker suggests, even then Italians occupied only the second social strata. A considerable distance stood between Italians and the upwardly mobile, affluent classes of the third and fourth strata.[23]

Italians struggled with deprivation stemming from religious and ancestral estrangement. They saw the Catholic Church in America accommodating to a society which treated as outsiders. With efforts structured largely around the Irish Church, the American Catholic Church neglected their responsibility to Italian immigrants. They failed to appreciate the customs and traditions of the contadini whose primitive and imaginative faith was more of a folk religion and less the rigid orthodoxy of Catholicism. Contadini earned a reputation for celebrations (festes) held in honor of the Virgin Mary and patron saints. The cultural displacement of the contadini contributed to growing anticlericalism.[24]

Among other ethnic groups, Italian immigrants consisted mainly of fathers and sons who came to the US expecting to return to Italy after a few years. Polish and Slavic Catholics came with their families intact and village priests in tow.[25] Italian immigrants found themselves severed from both faith and family. The result was a deeper psychological deprivation. In a study of Italian Pentecostals in Chicago, Joseph Colletti wrote that the “emotional expressiveness of Pentecostalism” helped “fill the psychic deprivation that many Italian immigrants felt as a result of being in tension with their new environment.”[26] Economic and ethnocultural conditions created an identity-crisis. Among other internal problems, affective displacement was the most detrimental to the self-concept of Italian immigrants. Their newfound faith reassured Italian Pentecostals that a sense of self-worth was possible without ever climbing the social ladder. The Pentecostal community supplied mutual affirmation, not conditioned on economic status, social rank, or respectability, but on the hope of salvation and the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. Personal and cultural estrangement was alleviated by a new faith community which functioned like a surrogate or extended family.[27]

The significance of severed familial ties cannot be overstated. The immediate family structured life in Italy more than any other influence. This was particularly true for families from southern Italy. Living in rural cities, southern Italians huddled closely together seeking refuge from pillagers and malaria. The demands of the family superseded loyalties to all other social institutions. Even among the extended family there was a degree of loyalty denied to all others. Only through comparaggio (godparenthood) or intermarriage within the village community could one gain access to the level of “trust, intimacy, and interdependence” of the family circle.[28] Edward C. Banfield’s study of a Sicilian-southern Italian society argued that Italian’s were family centered to a fault, noting the incidence of “amoral familism.”[29] Banfield suggested that peasants and the ruling class alike were unable to act “for any end transcending the immediate, material interest of the nuclear family.”[30]

Separation from family amplified other forms of social isolation. Yet the Pentecostal faith gave Italians an extended spiritual family, allowing immigrants to overcome social-psychological estrangement and marginalization. Pentecostalism opened the Italian-American community to a spirit of fraternal love and emotional intimacy according to which they could survive and even prosper in American society.[31] As Enrico C. Cumbo explains, Pentecostalism provided Italians with a “kin network system” of material, financial, and job-related support.[32] As prospects of succeeding in American society improved, pioneers of the movement travelled back to Italy and returned with their families in tow.

Pentecostalism gave Italian Americans the spiritual foundation necessary to overcome isolation and deprivation. From a psychological perspective, the newfound faith of Italian Pentecostals can be located in an “affective disposition, an aesthetic.”[33] The Pentecostal faith contributed to the reconstituting of Italian identity, bringing Italians to a place of continuity with their ancestral belief system and social surroundings. Rather than alienating Italians, Pentecostalism reinforced ethnocultural identity by preserving the affective and pietistic elements of their ancestral faith. The Pentecostal experience was a critical step in repairing the social-psychological deprivation of Italian immigrants, supplying hope amid economic uncertainty and restoration to broken familial bonds.

Affectivity and Aesthetic Worship Practices

Italian immigrants readily appropriated the Pentecostal style of worship, characterized by freedom in the Spirit and more personal access to the divine. Worship became the meeting ground for Italian Pentecostal orthopathy and orthopraxis. A new sense of fulfillment in worship, accompanied by an affective disposition and fraternal love was sustained by a unique combination of aesthetic practices. Pentecostalism transformed the religious outlook and fellowship of Italians. This process began in the crisis experience of Spirit baptism and gradually reshaped the Italian immigrant understanding of commitment and community. These changes were expressed in the congregational life, liturgy, gestures, and artistry of Italian Pentecostal worship.

Pentecostalism is distinguished by the move from orthodoxy (right-doctrine) to the emphasis on orthopathy (right-affections). This shift appears in the elevation by Italians of direct experience over doctrinal statements. The beginning and expansion of Italian Pentecostalism is charted more than any other phenomenon by the incidence of Spirit baptism.[34] Wilma W. Davies attributes the birth of Argentinian Pentecostalism to Italians from the Chicago Mission, whose ministry to the Italian diaspora in Buenos Aires led to the “first known Pentecostal experience in Argentina” in 1909.[35] The Chicago missionaries also planted the first seeds of the Pentecostal movement in São Paul, Brazil. While Spirit baptism is commonly considered a crisis experience, it is framed within the organic whole that encompasses the Christian life. Spirit baptism acts as a marker of spiritual progress, a symbolic gateway or bridge in the transition to more profound levels of Christian experience and worship.[36]

Pentecostal worship opened Italians to the dynamism and spontaneity of the Holy Spirit.[37] The freedom of the divine Spirit stood in sharp contrast to the formalism and rigidity Italians experienced in orthodox denominations. They found they could encounter God in the fellowshipping community in a more personal, immediate, and influential way. The experiences and practices of Pentecostal worship allowed Italians to recover from the social-psychological deprivation that played such a significant role in the early Italian-American experience. The gifts of the Spirit were distributed freely with little partiality to age, rank, or gender. According to Harvey Cox, a large scale effect of this was a renewed view of the involvement of women in Italian Pentecostal worship. The freedom and spontaneity of worship created “a new space for leadership [and] empowerment” among women.[38] In North America women served as prophets, healers, evangelists and preachers. The first Italian-American converts as well as the first Pentecostal missionaries were women.[39]

Cox maintains that Pentecostal worship is fundamentally “aberrant” and poses a challenge to the existing social order. Pentecostal worship provides a platform on which women testify and also dance in public. This can be seen in the emergence of Pentecostalism in Italy where the same realities contravene the social norms of a patriarchal society. In Sicily women are confined to the domestic domain and expected to exhibit compliant, modest behavior in public. The songs, prayers, and testimonies of women Pentecostals reflect the reframing of Italian theology and worldview. This theology is displayed not primarily in prayers offered to the Virgin Mary, but in the qualities attributed to the Godhead. The titles “Father,” “Son,” and “Spirit” are comprehended in light of feminine characteristics, and the distant and judgmental God of traditional Catholic theology is reconceived as a being more concerned with human emotion and affectivity.[40] In this context affectivity is connected to a feminine spirituality and opens the door to a holistic theology of mutuality and love. Cox refers to this feminine dimension as a “primal spirituality,” motivated by the attempt to uncover the religious wellspring of the Italian people. Suppressed by centuries of “male-dominated, institutional piety,” the religiosity of Italians points to the profound value placed on female exemplars. In addition to the Virgin Mary, the legacies of female exemplars such as Mary Magdalene and Saint Catherine of Sienna are ensconced in frescoes, statues, and Cathedrals bearing their names.[41]

Italian Pentecostals invoke female imagery through songs and sermons. In a study of Sicilian Pentecostalism, Salvatore Cucchiari records an extract of an Italian sermon:

How marvelous that look of Christ’s must have been. He was looking at the man, not with hostility, not with severity, but with a look full of grace. A look … like that of a mother at her child, a defenseless small child. She will never look at it with a severe or cruel look. She will look upon it with all her love.[42]

Here, not simply God, but the person of Jesus Christ is depicted through use of feminine language as a mother protecting her children. The phrase “full of grace” is a reference to the Hail Mary, the most common of Catholic prayers. Jesus is thereby described in terms consonant with the most venerated female saint. Reference to Jesus as an emotionally vulnerable person is common in Sicily according to Cucchiari. There Jesus is depicted as someone who does not “act or feel in a characteristically Mediterranean male way.” ‘Spirit’ in Italian, as in other gendered languages is ordinarily feminine. It is no surprise then that the religious roles women are most active in, prophecy and healing, are commonly identified with the work of the Spirit. The centrality of the Spirit keeps patriarchal tendencies at bay and opens the door to mutuality and an egalitarian soteriology. According to Cucchiari Pentecostals worship a “cross-gendered” God. Redefinition of the divine family translates into a new image of the earthly family. The traditional structure of the Italian household, according to which the father is the authority figure and the mother is the emotional center, is suspended and both parents are allowed to exhibit male and female qualities.[43]

Pentecostalism has redefined Italian understanding of gender, imbibing worship with a primal, affective spirituality. This is comprehended in the freedom of women to worship and express themselves in the Spirit who distributes the divine gifts without partiality. The feminine imagery of Italian Pentecostal worship evokes an aesthetic sensibility of equity and mutuality.

For Italian communities outside their native land where distance from kin has created alienation and disaffection, the Pentecostal movement supplements an emotional closeness. The affectivity inherent in Pentecostalism transfers the emotional affinity of the Italian household to the spiritual community. This element can be seen in salutations conveying a fraternal bond. Italian-American Pentecostals commonly address one another in the faith community with greetings communicating spiritual siblinghood such as fratelli (brother) and sorelli (sister). Another noteworthy expression is the kiss of peace (pache). This form of greeting contains a universal sense of love and affection, extending a gesture normally reserved for romantic or familial intimacy to the worshipping community.[44]

An aesthetic dimension is also expressed in the songs and hymns forming the chore of the frequent and lengthy worship meetings of Italian Pentecostals. In a study of Italian Pentecostals in Canada, Enrico C. Cumbo described their worship as characterized by an “intense, unmediated experience of the numinous”; the Italian hymnbook was considered the only indispensible text alongside the bible.[45] The 1928 edition, composed by Massimiliano Tosetto and Michele Palma, contained 328 hymns. Later editions included a collection of Sunday school songs for children. The hymnal was considered a treasury of spiritual wisdom, guidance, and everyday theology.[46]

The same admiration Italian Pentecostals had for the hymnal was reflected in an appreciation for literature containing their newfound hope. One of the most effective means for reaching the Italian people with the Pentecostal message was the distribution of gospel literature. Sunday school books and gospel tracts were distributed in droves. In 1956, a reported 6 tons of gospel literature was mailed to all parts of Italy in a single month.^[47] In 1961 the Italian Assemblies of God passed out one million gospels of John and millions of gospel tracts. Literature evangelism opened the largely Catholic populace to God’s personal revelation in Scripture.^[48] To the chagrin of Parish priests, reading of the bible by laity had a direct effect on diminishing numbers at mass. People were captivated by the intuitive and immediate encounter they had with God through reading the gospel on their own accord. Laypersons found “a more direct way of access to God” through gospel literature.^[49]

Conclusion

The journey of Italian Pentecostals was marked by the pursuit for more personal, vital, and passional religious experience. Italians found a solution to their struggle for purpose and self-identity in the freedom and emotionality of Pentecostalism. Their yearning for religious fulfillment pushed Italians away from Roman Catholicism to the most accessible religious competitor, mainstream Protestantism. There they found a comparable rigidity and pressure to conform to denominational standards. Dissatisfied with conventional denominations, they were compelled to create an independent fellowship. This allowed them to pursue religious fulfillment and express themselves more freely in worship without the stricture of denominational standards.

The conditions which formed the basis of the Italian Evangelical Mission created a community more conducive to the religious primitivism of the contadini. In this pre-Pentecostal state the community lacked the necessary stability to deal with doctrinal tension. The absence of affiliation and formal structure reinforced sectarian values and amplified ethnocultural alienation. Pentecostalism allowed Italians to pursue freedom in worship and maintain evangelical fervor, while achieving a greater sense of continuity with their ancestral faith. Pentecostalism gave Italians an extended spiritual family and the necessary tools to surmount sectarian differences, economic hardship, and psychological deprivation.

Italian Pentecostals forged unity through the common experience of Spirit baptism. Aesthetic worship practices helped sustain a new affective religiosity, preventing sectarian relapse and promoting a new attitude of gender equality. Italian Pentecostals fostered egalitarian forms of worship commensurate with an expanded view of the Godhead and an awareness for the caring, compassionate, and maternal character of God. The affectivity of Italians transformed by the Pentecostal message was expressed tangibly through hymns, gestures, and literature, practices conveying a renewed awareness for the loveliness and beauty of the gospel.

Italian Americans found in Pentecostalism a middle ground between the excesses of formalism and sectarianism. They found in the primitivism of Pentecostalism greater continuity with their ancestral faith and in the dynamic spirituality of Pentecostalism a new vitality and uniformity. Pentecostalism allowed Italians to maintain their ethnic sensibilities while promoting an egalitarian understanding of God and congregational life. The emergence of Italian Pentecostalism consisted in the preservation of Italian identity and the revisioning of Italian spirituality.

 

PR

 

Notes

[1] Robert M. Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (New York, NY; Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1979), 110.

[2] Joseph Colletti, “Luigi Francescon,” in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (NIDPCM), ed. Stanley M. Burgess, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 646; Pietro Ottolini, Life and Mission (Printed by author: 1962): 3-6.

[3] Francesco Toppi, Luigi Francescon (Roma: ADI-Media, 2007), 59; Ottolini, Life and Mission, 5-6.

[4] Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited,110.

[5] Louis De Caro, Our Heritage: The Christian Church of North America (Sharon, PA: General Council of the Christian Church of North America, 1977), 23-29; See Joseph Colletti, Ethnic Pentecostalism in Chicago: 1890-1950 (England: University of Birmingham, 1990). Their zeal was matched only by their commitment to biblical standards. Disagreement arose over the literal interpretation of the Sabbath (137).

[6] Ottolini, Life and Mission,9.

[7] Colletti, Ethnic Pentecostalism in Chicago, 140-43.

[8] Belmont Assembly of God, Anniversary Celebration: Great is thy Faithfulness: 100 Year Anniversary, 1907-2007 (Chicago, IL: Belmont Assembly of God, 2007), “100 Years: A Rich History of God’s Grace.”

[9] Giovanni Traettino, “Italy,” in the New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, edited by Stanley M. Burgess, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan), 134; Joseph Fiorentino, “A Summary of the Italian Pentecostal Movement in the USA and Abroad,” in the Lighthouse , vol. 3 no. 7 (July, 1961): 7.

[10] Wilma Wells Davies, The Embattled but Empowered Community: Comparing Understandings of Spiritual Power in Argentine Popular and Pentecostal Cosmologies, Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 91-92;Roberto Bracco, Il Risveglio Pentecostale in Italia (Roma: ADI-Media, 1955), sec. “Nascita del Movimento.”

[11] Carmini Napolitano, “The Development of Pentecostalism in Italy,” in European Pentecostalism, ed. William K. Kay and Anne E. Dyer, Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies 7 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011), 192.

[12] De Caro, Our Heritage, 21-22.

[13] Ottolini, Life and Mission, 5-6.

[14] Guy BonGiovanni, Pioneers of the Faith (Farrell, PA: Sound Ministries, 1971), 19-20.

[15] Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited , 266n35.

[16] Ibid., 110.

[17] Ibid., 110.

[18] H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1929), 17-21, 25.

[19] Charle Y. Glock, “The Role of Deprivation in the Origin and Evolution of Religious Groups.” In Religion and Social Conflict, eds. Robert Lee and Martin E. Marty (New York, NY; Oxford, Eng.: Oxford University Press, 1964), 26-30; 33-34.

[20] Humbert S. Nelli, The Italians in Chicago: 1880-1930: A Study in Ethnic Mobility (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1970), 3-5.

[21] Rudolph J. Vecoli, “The Formation of Chicago’s ‘Little Italies,’” in Journal of American Ethnic History 2.2: 5-20. 1983), 7. Sicilians filled the vacuum created by earlier immigrant groups who had left the inner-city seeking better conditions. They settled in neighborhoods that had been deteriorating for years (12-13).

[22] Vecoli, “Formation of Chicago’s ‘Little Italies,’” 12; Nelli, Italians in Chicago, 14.

[23] Grant Wacker,Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, MA; London, Eng.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 208-9.

[24] Rudolph J. Vecoli,“Contadini in Chicago: A Critique of the Uprooted,” in Journal of American History 51.3 (1964), 415-17.

[25] Nelli, Italians in Chicago,182-83.

[26] Colletti, Ethnic Pentecostalism in Chicago, 5-6.

[27] David Martino, The Emergence and Historical-Theological Development of the Christian Church of North America (Thesis, Ashland Theological Seminary, 1988), 108.

[28] Vecoli, “Contadini in Chicago,” 404-5, 409.

[29] Edward C. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958), 10.

[30] See also Nelli, Italians in Chicago, 5; and Vecoli, “Contadini in Chicago,” 404-5.

[31] Martino, Emergence and Historical-Theological Development, 108-9.

[32] Enrico C. Cumbo, “‘Your Old Men Will Dream Dreams’: The Italian Pentecostal Experience in Canada, 1912-1945,” in Journal of American Ethnic History 19.3 (2000), 55.

[33] Wolfgang Vondey, Pentecostalism: A Guide for the Perplexed (London; New York: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2013), 43-44.

[34] De Caro, Our Heritage, 51-62.

[35] Davies, The Embattled but Empowered Community, 91-92. See also Norberto J. Saracco, Argentine Pentecostalism: Its History and Theology (PhD thesis, UK. University of Birmingham, 1989), 45-50.

[36] Walter J. Hollenweger, The Pentecostals (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Pub., 1972), 85; Mark J. Cartledge, “Pentecostal Experience: An Example of Practical-Theological Rescripting,” in Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 28.1 (2008): 32.

[37] Napolitano, “The Development of Pentecostalism in Italy,” 190.

[38] Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995), 196.

[39] Cumbo, “‘Your Old Men Will Dream Dreams,’” 47-48.

[40] Cox, Fire from Heaven, 199-201.

[41] Cox, Fire from Heaven, 204-10.

[42] Salvatore Cucchiari, “Between Shame and Sanctification: Patriarchy and Its Transformation in Sicilian Pentecostalism,” in American Ethnologist 17.4 (1990): 690.

[43] Cucchiari, “Between Shame and Sanctification,” 691-92, 702-3; Cox, Fire from Heaven, 203.

[44] Cumbo, “‘Your Old Men Will Dream Dreams,’” 55.

[45] Ibid., 43-45.

[46] Ibid., 44, 71 n. 30.

[47] Donald B. Sheley, “A Visit to Italy,” Pentecostal Evangel (PE) (February 10, 1957): 26-27, http://pentecostalarchives.org/digitalPublications/USA/Assemblies%20of%20God%20USA/Pentecostal%20Evangel/Unregistered/1957/FPHC/1957_02_10.pdf#search=%22Pentecost%20in%20italy%22.

[48] Christine Carmichael, “Pentecost in Italy,” Pentecostal Evangel (PE) XLIX (Oct. 29, 1961), 22, http://pentecostalarchives.org/digitalPublications/USA/Assemblies%20of%20God%20USA/Pentecostal%20Evangel

[49] The Missionary Review of the World 21 no. 10 (October 1908): 798. Soon after his Pentecostal experience at the Chicago Evangelical Mission (ca. 1907), M. Tosetto returned to Italy with his newfound hope, and even under persecution, made an effort to pass out bibles and gospel tracts.

This paper was previously presented with the title of “Affectivity and Aesthetic Worship Practices: The Emergence of Italian Pentecostalism,” at the Annual Meeting of the Center for Renewal Studies, European Pentecostal Perspectives Group, Virginia Beach, VA, March 2013. Later included in the Fall 2021 issue.