Italian American Herald - August 2019

ACHIEVERS
She puts her philosophy into action, and helps students succeed
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PER I BAMBINI
La passeggiata:
A time-honored tradition that is not just for people
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VINI D’ITALIA
Perricone:
‘The deep and intense
soul of western Italy’
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WWW.ITALIANAMERICANHERALD.COM
AUGUST 2019
A MONTHLY NEWSPAPER SERVING THE ITALIAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
The Christian Street Baptist Church at 1020 Christian St. was built in 1890 for the congregation of the Protestant Episcopal Italian Mission & Church of L’Emmanuello. The church was a South Philadelphia landmark and a reminder of the wave of Italian immigration in South Philadelphia during the late 19th and early 20th century. It was demolished in 2018.
Protestant roots in the Delaware Valley’s Italian-American Community
Early proselytizing seen as attempt to wean Italians from Catholicism
by Jeanne Outlaw-Cannavo
Italy today is still considered a country
in which the majority of its citizens are
of the Catholic faith. For those who have studied the events that shaped the primary religion of the country, the conversion from Roman mythology to Christianity is often credited as the catalyst which first introduced monotheism to the Italian peninsula.
However, it was actually Judaism that
was the first monotheistic religion on the peninsula. Judaism was practiced even prior to the birth of Jesus Christ when merchants from Judea were allowed to take residence in Rome as peddlers. Then on April 14, 70 A.D., during Passover, Titus laid siege to Jerusalem and brought hundreds of Jews
to Rome as slaves. In later years a new monotheistic religion would begin to take root on the Italian peninsula, Christianity.
When Christianity did reach Italy, it was
not very prevalent among the populace and a long history of persecution followed until Constantine converted and became the first Christian Roman emperor.
In February 313, Constantine met with Licinius in Milan where they crafted the Edict of Milan. The edict said that Christians could openly worship what they chose. From that point forward the Roman Catholic religion has been and still is the prominent religion
of Italians and their descendants around
the world. However Article 19 of the Italian Constitution states, “Anyone is entitled to freely profess their religious belief in any form, individually or with others, and to promote them and celebrate rites in public or in private, provided they are not offensive to public morality”. This article brought
an end to Roman Catholicism as the state religion of Italy.
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Vol. 6 / No. 8