AMERICAN CATHOLIC, INDIAN CATHOLICS: REFLECTIONS ON RELIGIOUS IDENTITY, ETHNOGRAPHY, AND THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS MATHEW N. SCHMALZ 1. Introduction In this short article, I would like to reflect upon the relationship between religious identity, ethnography, and the history of religions. I most immediately choose this juxtaposition because of my own experience as an American Catholic studying north Indian Catholi- cism. But I also make the connection between identity, ethnography, and history of religions to highlight the seemingly perpetual crisis of identity that exists within history of religions and ethnography as seemingly separate modes of scholarly endeavor. The dream of a Reli,?zonsze?issenscha, f'-t, of a veritable science of religion, has become less tenable in an age where such broad claims to knowledge are consid- ered to be vain pretensions. Likewise, the claims of ethnography to a disinterested observation of cultural realities have been thoroughly challenged by a variety of post-modem critiques (Clinbrd and Marcus 1986). If we understand identity as a stable state, then we could fairly say that both ethnography and the history of religions continue to be in a condition of experimentation in which new meth- ods and perspectives are continually being deployed. In addressing ethnography and history of religions through my own work in north India as a historian of religions and American Catholic among north Indian Catholics, I wish to focus upon how lies and transgression form the very basis of ethnographic investigation. Often, it is what these lies and transgressions both conceal and make possible that forms a rather tenuous bridge between history of religions and an- thropology. 2. Involvement and identity I center my reflections upon my relationship with a prominent In- dian Catholic charismatic healer named Jude. I arrived in India with the ostensible purpose of writing an ethnography of a Catholic com-