A talk by out-of-town scholar that our manager at work brought connected me with an interesting couple Friday. The Friday morning speaker – who attracted – for me – surprise 30 people was Linda Mercadante. Professor Mercadante is a Jewish woman turned Catholic turned Presbyterian minister who teaches at a Methodist seminary in one of my old research site and the home of many of our family members, Central Ohio (at Methodist Theological School, off of 23 just south of Delaware,Ohio).
Following a research design not totally different from what I’ve done before, Professor Mercadante has been interviewing people who say they’re “spiritual not religious” – first, in Boulder, Colorado, and now in Central Ohio. It was easier landing these folks – often people who are into New Age/New Religious Movements – a la some of Serge and Penny’s interests – and to find out what conceptions they have of “mainstream” religious communities – authoritarian, hypocritical, always asking for money.
(Professor Mercadante has started giving talks in churches, and she seems to have some ideas about what churches might do to reach out to these folks. One thing she tries to do with these students is teach them and encourage them to take theological study very seriously. She says some students convince themselves that they’ll greatly extend their theological study once they become pastors. She figures this is unrealistic – if they haven’t made theological study a strong discipline while in seminary, they’ll never pick it up while in pastoral ministry – they’ll never have time. And she says these “spiritual not religious” folks can tell when pastors are theologically shallow. Many of these folks are quite smart, and they can spot what they think is lazy thinking from a mile away. For more on Professor Mercadante's research, see http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/apr/27/more-describe-selves-as-spiritual-not-religious/ )
Just as interesting was Professor Mercadante’s spouse, who came with her for almost 20 hours in Louisville. Joseph Mas. He’s a lawyer – who works primarily with undocumented Spanish-speaking immigrants in Columbus and Franklin County and is a leader in Central Ohio’s growing Latino community. (I see also ran – apparently unsuccessfully – for Franklin County municipal court judge against my former GOP state representative in Victorian Village, Amy Salerno.)
Mr. Mas was very interesting. We spoke about growing up as minorities in 1960s North Florida – his family left Cuba two years after the revolution – right before I was born – and he attended Pensacola Senior High School – and also about my research about South Florida and its immigrant communities. We also spoke about immigrant rights and immigrant reform. A conference he put together with Central Ohio religious leaders on immigration reform was to run this week. He spoke very passionately about immigration reform as the civil rights issue of the 2000s – and optimistically, with the possibility of a President Obama and a filibuster-proof Democratic majority (of at least 60 senators maybe counting independents Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman) passing path-to-citizenship immigration reform. (It’ll never happen – immigration reform might, but a Democratic majority of 58 or 60 after the 2008 election? No way – not with Senator Obama’s lead in the polls as tiny as it is now and him dragging down Democratic U.S. Senate candidates in states like KY.)
He also spoke about his law practice. In Columbus, as in Tallahassee, the sheriff is in change of the jail. Jailers under Democratic Sheriff Karnes have begun faxing the information to federal immigration authorities when they believe inmates there are undocumented immigrants. In this way the federal authorities intercept inmates for possible deportation as they are released. But Mr. Mas has worked out a way to make Columbus more of a “sanctuary city” (an official sanctuary city is one like San Francisco in which the city has told law enforcement officers NOT to cooperate with federal immigration authorities at all) by working with local judges, who sometimes arrange to have undocumented immigrants released on Sundays, when the immigration authorities aren’t working (and so they get those faxes too late, when the inmates are already released).
I also talked a little about my own research – which once again made my itchy to do something with it – including my sampling and recruiting strategy. I had demographic quotas (trying to reach people of different age groups, political ideologies, ethnic backgrounds, women and men, Democratic and Republican, and so on). Then I used 6-10 local non-abortion conflict contacts of mine – friends and family members, my hairdresser, my bartender, my physical therapist, and so on – to reach people to fill those quotas. I interviewed lots of abortion activists in Central Ohio and the Albany area – and community leaders. But the strategy I outlined above was what I used to find non-elite, non-activists (“regular people”) with whom to do interviews, about their lives and their perspectives on abortion and abortion policy. Professor Mercadante has used some snowball sampling (which I often did – friends of initial interviewees) – but also more explicit self-selection than I did – put a notice up on a listserv and see who responds.
I confessed to Mr. Mas that even though I interviewed 30 regular people in Central Ohio – and probably more than 200 total people there – I interviewed no Latinos. This was partly in the late 1990s, when the Latino population in Columbus was growing and sizable but still probably at least half what it is now. I took Mr. Mas’ card partly because if I ever do research in Central Ohio again, I would never want to get away without finding out more about the Latino population – plus my interests have focused somewhat more explicitly about immigration and racial and ethnic relations.
I didn’t get to ask Mr. Mas about his leadership in the Court-Appointed Special Advocates organization against which we butted heads in Columbus (see “Blast from the . . . “ (including the comment)). But I was interested to find that – from his studies at Capital University law School (he was an undergraduate at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida), he knew not only one of my informants (Ohio Supreme Court Justice Stratton) but also one of our lawyer, Roger Warner. Small world.
I wished both Mercadante and Mas best with their work. Hopefully I’ll cross paths with these two interesting people again.
Following a research design not totally different from what I’ve done before, Professor Mercadante has been interviewing people who say they’re “spiritual not religious” – first, in Boulder, Colorado, and now in Central Ohio. It was easier landing these folks – often people who are into New Age/New Religious Movements – a la some of Serge and Penny’s interests – and to find out what conceptions they have of “mainstream” religious communities – authoritarian, hypocritical, always asking for money.
(Professor Mercadante has started giving talks in churches, and she seems to have some ideas about what churches might do to reach out to these folks. One thing she tries to do with these students is teach them and encourage them to take theological study very seriously. She says some students convince themselves that they’ll greatly extend their theological study once they become pastors. She figures this is unrealistic – if they haven’t made theological study a strong discipline while in seminary, they’ll never pick it up while in pastoral ministry – they’ll never have time. And she says these “spiritual not religious” folks can tell when pastors are theologically shallow. Many of these folks are quite smart, and they can spot what they think is lazy thinking from a mile away. For more on Professor Mercadante's research, see http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/apr/27/more-describe-selves-as-spiritual-not-religious/ )
Just as interesting was Professor Mercadante’s spouse, who came with her for almost 20 hours in Louisville. Joseph Mas. He’s a lawyer – who works primarily with undocumented Spanish-speaking immigrants in Columbus and Franklin County and is a leader in Central Ohio’s growing Latino community. (I see also ran – apparently unsuccessfully – for Franklin County municipal court judge against my former GOP state representative in Victorian Village, Amy Salerno.)
Mr. Mas was very interesting. We spoke about growing up as minorities in 1960s North Florida – his family left Cuba two years after the revolution – right before I was born – and he attended Pensacola Senior High School – and also about my research about South Florida and its immigrant communities. We also spoke about immigrant rights and immigrant reform. A conference he put together with Central Ohio religious leaders on immigration reform was to run this week. He spoke very passionately about immigration reform as the civil rights issue of the 2000s – and optimistically, with the possibility of a President Obama and a filibuster-proof Democratic majority (of at least 60 senators maybe counting independents Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman) passing path-to-citizenship immigration reform. (It’ll never happen – immigration reform might, but a Democratic majority of 58 or 60 after the 2008 election? No way – not with Senator Obama’s lead in the polls as tiny as it is now and him dragging down Democratic U.S. Senate candidates in states like KY.)
He also spoke about his law practice. In Columbus, as in Tallahassee, the sheriff is in change of the jail. Jailers under Democratic Sheriff Karnes have begun faxing the information to federal immigration authorities when they believe inmates there are undocumented immigrants. In this way the federal authorities intercept inmates for possible deportation as they are released. But Mr. Mas has worked out a way to make Columbus more of a “sanctuary city” (an official sanctuary city is one like San Francisco in which the city has told law enforcement officers NOT to cooperate with federal immigration authorities at all) by working with local judges, who sometimes arrange to have undocumented immigrants released on Sundays, when the immigration authorities aren’t working (and so they get those faxes too late, when the inmates are already released).
I also talked a little about my own research – which once again made my itchy to do something with it – including my sampling and recruiting strategy. I had demographic quotas (trying to reach people of different age groups, political ideologies, ethnic backgrounds, women and men, Democratic and Republican, and so on). Then I used 6-10 local non-abortion conflict contacts of mine – friends and family members, my hairdresser, my bartender, my physical therapist, and so on – to reach people to fill those quotas. I interviewed lots of abortion activists in Central Ohio and the Albany area – and community leaders. But the strategy I outlined above was what I used to find non-elite, non-activists (“regular people”) with whom to do interviews, about their lives and their perspectives on abortion and abortion policy. Professor Mercadante has used some snowball sampling (which I often did – friends of initial interviewees) – but also more explicit self-selection than I did – put a notice up on a listserv and see who responds.
I confessed to Mr. Mas that even though I interviewed 30 regular people in Central Ohio – and probably more than 200 total people there – I interviewed no Latinos. This was partly in the late 1990s, when the Latino population in Columbus was growing and sizable but still probably at least half what it is now. I took Mr. Mas’ card partly because if I ever do research in Central Ohio again, I would never want to get away without finding out more about the Latino population – plus my interests have focused somewhat more explicitly about immigration and racial and ethnic relations.
I didn’t get to ask Mr. Mas about his leadership in the Court-Appointed Special Advocates organization against which we butted heads in Columbus (see “Blast from the . . . “ (including the comment)). But I was interested to find that – from his studies at Capital University law School (he was an undergraduate at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida), he knew not only one of my informants (Ohio Supreme Court Justice Stratton) but also one of our lawyer, Roger Warner. Small world.
I wished both Mercadante and Mas best with their work. Hopefully I’ll cross paths with these two interesting people again.
1 comment:
Thank you for your excellent summary and kind words. You were really listening...that does a teacher's heart good! I found out about your posting through our school's admissions person who keeps a blog alert on the school. Thank you again.
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