This essay discusses the complex history of Italian American Protestants, especially during the peak years of immigration. Through the use of a wide variety of sources including spiritual autobiographies, archival material, and Italian American fiction, I argue that Protestantism became a means to negotiate old world and new world ways more than it resulted in the double alienation of rejection by Catholic immigrants and condescension by Anglo-Protestants. Italian American Protestants retained a sense of Italianita at the same time that they became American.
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