Portraits of immigrant religious communities in the heartland

It was in Cedar Rapids, surrounded by cornfields, where Iowa artist Grant Wood painted “American Gothic,” the iconic 1930 portrayal of a stern-looking woman and a man with a pitchfork in front of a white frame house.

- By Giovanna DELL’ORTO

JESSIE WARDARSKI Associated Press IMMIGRANTS take a citizenship class in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, this month.

The city presents many different images today after more than a century of international migration and faith-based resettlement efforts.

To many newcomers as well as lifelong residents, this heartland river city where migrants from present-day Lebanon built the first U.S. mosque is a welcoming microcosm of America’s melting pot at a time when immigration enforcementis disrupting families and communities.

Hundreds of refugee families were resettled by the Catherine McAuley Center, founded by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy, until the nationwide halt ordered by the Trump administration this spring.

At a recent class offered by the center, a Guatemalan woman and her son, along with five men from China, Benin, Togo, Sudan and Congo, sang the U.S. national anthem and rehearsed questions for the citizenship test.

“It is a matter of meshing or integrating — how do we get around in the community? How do we find our friends? How do we find bridges across cultural divides?” said Anne Dugger, the center’s director.

As Americans struggle to redefine who belongs in the social fabric, these are snapshots of heartland immigrants and their faith communities.

The story begins: Bohemians in Iowa

Bob Kazimour goes to Mass at St. Wenceslaus, where he remembers as a child the liturgy was in Latin and the homily in Czech. It’s the language of generations of his ancestors who left what was then Bohemia in Central Europe to work in Cedar Rapids’ meatpacking plants, forming the area’s first large immigrant group in the mid-to-late 1800s.

Kazimour can still sing a few Czech carols — and there’s a Czech choir, a Czech school and a goulash festival.