Skirtingų emigracijos bangų JAV lietuvių katalikų identiteto žymės : lietuvių kalba ir katalikybė

Abstract

From the end of the 19th century until our own day the inhabitants of Lithuania left their homeland in three major waves of emigration. Different waves meant different identities. The issue of how representatives of different emigration waves communicated with each other has not yet received much investigation in Lithuanian historiography. This paper discusses only one fragment of a broader theme: the relations among Lithuanian Catholics of different waves during the late 1940s and early 1950s, when Lithuanian Catholics from the so-called "greenhorn" and "DP" waves ended up in the same place at the same time. In constructing their Lithuanian-American Catholic identity these people gave their language and their faith unequal value: the "greenhorns" gave priority to their Catholic religion, whereas the "DPs" emphasized their Lithuanian language. In this way, language and faith became competing factors in the ethno-religious identity of Lithuanian Catholics living in the United States. These competing groups of Lithuanian-American Catholics also relied on distinct social network models: the "greenhorns" congregated around their parishes; the "DPs" formed Lithuanian communities writ large.