[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The changes in one of the most famous foreign-language papers illustratethe decline.In 1997 the Jewish Forward observed its hundredth birthday.Atits peak in the 1920s this Yiddish daily newspaper had a circulation of250,000.By the time its centennial came, it was a weekly of only 40,000,published in three languages.The Yiddish edition numbered 10,000 andcatered mainly to an elderly audience.The Russian edition printed 4,000copies.But the largest, the English edition, begun in 1990, had a circulationof 25,000.The new immigrants from Asia, Europe, and Latin America began to pub-lish new foreign-language newspapers to serve their growing populations.Hence Korean newspapers appeared in Los Angeles and circulation of Span-ish newspapers increased greatly as the Mexican American population ofthat city grew.In New York City, no fewer than four Chinese and three Span-ish daily newspapers were being published after 1990.No doubt if the pres-ent immigration trends continue, new foreign-language papers will appear,and some of the older ones catering to the latest newcomers will expand.Butin general, the older foreign-language press is on a steep decline in this coun-try.The loss of Old World culture can also be seen in the declining use of for-eign languages in one of the most important immigrant institutions, thechurch.The Danish Lutheran churches are a case in point.As the younglearned English, churches began to abandon Danish, first in the Sunday184 Assimilation into American Lifeschools in the 1920s, then in youth work, and finally in the services a decadelater.Most of the books and periodicals published by Danish Lutherans inthe late nineteenth century were in Danish, and as late as 1940 the annualreports for the United Evangelical Lutheran Church were about half in Dan-ish, but the use of the language was discontinued after that.The decline of foreign languages in churches was indicative of the growingAmericanization and loss of ethnicity in American religion in the twentiethcentury.Lutheranism, which was originally divided mainly along ethnic ornationality lines such as Swedish, Danish, German, and Norwegian, is a goodexample of this process.In 1967 the United Evangelical Lutheran Church, ofDanish background, merged with two other synods, one German and theother Norwegian in origin, and became the American Lutheran Church.Twoyears later another Danish Lutheran church, the American Evangelical Lu-theran Church, joined with German, Swedish, and Finnish synods to becomethe Lutheran Church in America.These various Lutheran groups were nolonger using their old languages or recruiting ministers from the Old World,and since they already were cooperating in religious activities, they reachedthe inevitable conclusion: merge into an American Lutheranism.Mergerswent a step further in 1987 when the American Lutheran Church and theLutheran Church in America joined with the Association of Evangelical Lu-theran Churches, originally of German origin, to become the 5.3 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.The same Americanization process happened in Catholicism.In the latenineteenth century a burning issue in American Catholicism was the na-tionality parish supported ardently by, among others, German, French Cana-dian, and Polish Catholics.The Church disapproved of nationality parishesin principle although it continued to allow them in practice.In the twenti-eth century, however, the nationality issue gradually became less importantand so did the issue of national parishes.The Germans illustrate this change.In the 1890s German Catholics weremost insistent upon having their own priests and organizations and fosteredthe slogan  Language Saves Faith. The largest of these organizations wasthe Central Verein, founded in 1855.It reached a peak membership of125,000 on the eve of World War I and was especially strong in New York,Pennsylvania, and the Midwest.Second-generation German Catholics, how-ever, were already losing interest in an ethnic church when the war began.Twenty-three German Catholic publications were discontinued between1917 and 1923; and in those that remained, English became prevalent duringthe 1920s.Membership in the Central Verein declined to 86,000 in 1930 andless than half that a decade later.The journal of the Verein, Central Blattand Social Justice, printed more of its material in English (it discontinuedAssimilation into American Life 185German sections entirely in 1946) and changed its name to Social Justice in1940 but continued to lose readers; by the late 1960s, circulation barelyreached 2,000 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]