Abstract

Religious diversity in North America was often a painful experience for Slovak immigrants. Finding no churches to serve them in their own language, they established their own as Slovak Protestants had done. Roman Catholics were confronted by a largely Irish-dominated Church that rejected lay trusteeism and thus fueled many disagreements between the lay founders of the parishes and their clergy. The second, U.S.-educated generation largely gave up the struggle. In contrast, Slovak Greek Catholics, who had insufficient numbers to establish their own churches in the United States, were largely subsumed into Rusyn-dominated parishes, although many reverted to Orthodoxy because of the unwillingness of U.S. bishops to recognize the Union of Uzhorod. In Canada, where Rusyns were few, Slovak Greek Catholics established their own parishes and bishopric. Today the struggle has turned into one for survival, as U.S. and Canadian bishops seek to close or consolidate parishes with declining attendance. Keywords: lay initiative; lay trusteeism; national parishes; Union of Uzhorod Among the immigrants who came to the United States and Canada in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries were 500,000 Slovaks seeking work in the industrial heartland of North America. 1 These Slovaks were divided into four Christian denominations that would have to adapt to North American conditions. This essay will deal with how various Slovak Christians adjusted to new-world conditions. Those Slovak immigrants who moved to North America between the 1870s and 1914 settled largely in the industrial Northeast and Midwest, and in the Rocky Mountains of the Canadian West. Two-thirds of them hailed from the eastern Slovak counties of Spis, Saris, Zemplin, and Abov in northeastern Hungary.They found work in the coal mines, steel mills, oil refineries, and slaughterhouses of North America. The vast majority of these immigrants were single or recently married young men who hoped to make their fortune (the goal was usually $1000), return home, buy some land, and become prosperous peasants.2 Shortly after they arrived in the United States, however, these Slovak immigrants discovered that their employers and the local, state, and federal governments provided virtually no social services. Thus, if someone fell ill, was injured on the job, or died, no one compensated the victim or his family. Therefore, the first institution that immigrant workers established was the fraternal-benefit society, a self-help organization. It was usually begun informally- a group of male immigrants met in a neighborhood saloon, contributed a small amount of thenwages, drafted by-laws, and elected officers. Once the society was established, any member who fell ill, was injured, or was killed received a certain amount of money to compensate him or his family. Some of these fraternal-benefit societies were based on the guilds that had existed in Hungary before 1873. Others were modeled on religious fraternals that had existed in the old country for centuries. Others still may have been inspired by American examples. By 1890, Slovak immigrants had established fifty fraternal-benefit societies in their neighborhoods of residence.3 Once they had taken care of their material needs, the immigrants turned to their spiritual yearnings. As a result of the seventeenth-century Reformation in Europe, Slovak immigrants reflected the religious divisions of Northern Hungary. Thus, while more than 70 percent of the immigrants were Roman Catholic, about 12 percent were Lutherans, and the rest were either Greek Catholics or Calvinists.4 Each group had established its own local and national fraternal-benefit societies, and those fraternals that were founded specifically on the basis of religion led the way in establishing the second pillar of Slovak communities in America- the parish churches. When the first Slovak immigrants came to North America in the 1870s and 1880s, they found no parishes that could serve their spiritual needs in their own language. …

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