
On the outskirts of Naples, in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, lies the sanctuary of Madonna dell’Arco in Sant’Anastasia.
The walls of the shrine are covered in painted, votive tavolette — little, painted boards given as an offering in fulfillment of a vow (ex voto) and featuring devotional scenes and images of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Christ.
One of my favorites features a man in bed, with a heavily bandaged leg, his small children and wife praying to the Virgin and Child as they appear amidst a veil of clouds from their throne in heaven.
It is, in many ways, a visual embodiment of traditional notions of piety, defined as dutiful devotion to the divine.
But as I teach in my religious studies courses, piety can take a variety of forms.
It can be visual and sartorial, both highly personal and politically charged. More than an individual’s particular practice of religious reverence, piety is a socially defined and structured response to one’s emotional, social and material context. And in a time of political upheaval, social uncertainty and ecological anxiety, it might do well to revisit piety and its varieties.
Performing piety
In her book Performing Piety, for example, Elaine Peña paints a nuanced picture of devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe across Mexico and the United States. What may look like traditional piety — in the same vein as the tavolette outside Naples — is anything but. The embodied socio-economic and political piety of those devoted to La Virgen in the forms of prayer, songs, gestures and everyday activities like sweeping and cleaning create a sense of divinity and grace across borders and in various places — from Tepeyac in Mexico City to the working-class neighborhood of Rogers Park in Chicago, Illinois.
Many of the traditional markers of piety are present among Guadalupan devotees — images, sentiment, oral traditions and special practices — but are cast in new light: as politically informed; as not distinct or wholly separate from the supposedly secular activities of daily life; as simultaneously global and local, crossing borders and yet shaped by what Peña calls “site-specific” economic, cultural and aesthetic “interchanges.” (146)
Works like Peña’s remind us that piety is not distinct from the spheres of everyday life. Nor is it separate from our politics, our economic situation or the banal realities of the neighborhood we live in, the places we call “home” or the people we hang out with (or don’t). Which may make us wonder whether we’ve long misunderstood those tavolette and the piety they supposedly represent. Perhaps they are not exemplars of “traditional” piety, in some sense where piety is removed from the context of our daily realities and housed in some special, sacred sphere.
Perhaps instead they are just as influenced by the pious individual’s social standing, economic resources and political context as the individuals Peña profiles.
Dorothy Day’s (non)traditional piety
In fact, to take it one step further, perhaps there is no traditional form of piety — nor any kind of piety removed or reserved for solely sacred things. Another case to consider is the piety of one Dorothy Day. Inspired by her understanding of the Gospels and the lives of Catholic saints, Day (who is on her way to becoming a saint herself) was inspired to respond to the needs of her day.
She helped found the Catholic Worker Movement, with the aim of living in accordance with what she called, “the justice and charity of Jesus Christ.”
One of the movement’s guiding principles is hospitality towards those on the margins of society, based on the principles of communitarianism and personalism. Inspired by Day’s example, autonomous Catholic Worker communities across the world serve meals at soup kitchens and assist the unhoused in other, rather simple ways — for example, by serving as an address and phone-able location when they are applying for a job.
As Fiona Murphy reported for Religion News Service, Catholic Workers at the historic Maryhouse in Manhattan, where Day lived and worked until her death in 1980, are extending the idea of that communal, personalized piety by planting a garden on the 19th-century structure’s roof.
Not only a response to Pope Francis’ call for “ecological action,” the garden is also meant to help feed those they serve on the streets of New York City. This shows how piety is not solely introspective nor personal.
It is extrovert and communal, channeled outward and with the explicit aim of being grounded in the realities of everyday life — what Murphy writes as “a call to act directly and personally in order to form relationships and organize the community.”
Political piety
Which leads me to conclude that piety is always political. Though the political may not always be pious (boy howdy), it tends to take on a certain air of piety — especially in polarized times.
As people vote their “conscience,” they often invoke divine sources to underwrite or place a seal of approval upon their political opinions and choices.
Whether it is the beer-bellied voter at a rally wearing a “God, guns, and country” t-shirt or a nun marching with a sign that reads “we are all our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers,” each is an expression of piety expressed through the idiom of the political.
Though I have shared various examples from within the spectrum of Christianity in this post, such forms of piety are embodied by Muslims and Buddhists, Pagans and the spiritual-but-not-religious as well. It can also show up among those who see themselves as apolitical, like those who refrain from partisan politics or abstain from voting completely, as I explored in a piece for NewLines magazine in the lead-up to the 2024 US elections.
Why bring all this up now, you ask?
Well, as I hinted at above, we are cursed to live in interesting times. One of the side effects of our current situation is the tendency to accuse the “Other,” or opposing side, of being rather impious — of not interpreting the scriptures rightly or understanding the founding texts the way they “should” be read. The trick is, if piety is always political, and always informed by one’s emotional, social and material context, then all of us are as equally pious and irreverent. Just as there is no one way to be pious, there is no one way to interpret what makes someone (or their political choices) godly or ungodly, heathen or holy. It is, as with everything else religious and political, a matter of interpretation.
Thus the invitation, and challenge, for us all is to avoid the temptation of thinking that our piety is any more divine, exceptional or devoted, than that of others.
2/3/2025 9:16:01 PM