In search of an American Catholicism: a history of religion and culture in tension

Abstract

From the earliest days of the Republic, American Catholics have experienced dual allegiances - to the Church and to a nation whose culture was sometimes shaped by religious values, but often at odds with them. In this highly accessible and sympathetic history, the distinguished Catholic historian Jay Dolan follows the way American Catholicism has taken its distinctive shape and examines the complex identity of Catholics in the United States. The book focuses on American Catholics during three specific periods: the republican period (1780-1820), when the idea of democracy, based on the principles of the American Revolution, filtered into the Catholic community and changed the way that Catholics thought and acted; the beginnings of the modern industrial era (1880-1920), when Catholics began to leave the cultural and intellectual cocoon of the immigrant Church and to explore the intellectual frontiers of the new age; and finally, during the contemporary period (1960 and beyond), when the Catholic Church responded to the social, cultural, and intellectual forces of the period with the reforms of the Vatican II movement, while at the same time recognising the strength and vitality gained from the cultural and ethnic diversity of its adherents.

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