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Crabgrass Catholicism

How Suburbanization Transformed Faith and Politics in Postwar America
Brief Description
How suburbanisation was a crucial catalyst for reforms in the Catholic Church. The 1960s in America were a time of revolt against the stifling conformism embodied in the sprawling, uniform suburbs of the 1950s. Typically, the reforms of the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council, which aimed... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$10400

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How suburbanisation was a crucial catalyst for reforms in the Catholic Church.

The 1960s in America were a time of revolt against the stifling conformism embodied in the sprawling, uniform suburbs of the 1950s. Typically, the reforms of the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council, which aimed to make the Church more modern and accessible, are seen as one result of that broader cultural liberalisation. Yet in Crabgrass Catholicism, Stephen M. Koeth demonstrates that the liberalisation of the Church was instead the product of the mass suburbanisation that began some fifteen years earlier.

Koeth argues that postwar suburbanisation revolutionised the Catholic parish, the relationship between clergy and laity, conceptions of parochial education, and Catholic participation in US politics, and thereby was a significant factor in the religious disaffiliation that only accelerated in subsequent decades.

A novel exploration of the role of Catholics in postwar suburbanisation, Crabgrass Catholicism will be of particular interest to urban historians, scholars of American Catholicism and religious studies, and Catholic clergy and laity.

Series: Historical Studies of Urban America

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780226842202

Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 19 August 2025

Country: United States

Imprint: University of Chicago Press

Illustration: 25 halftones, 8 line drawings, 2 tables

Audience: Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 25.0mm

Width: 152.0mm

Height: 229.0mm

Weight: 454g

Pages: 336

About the Author

Stephen M. Koeth is assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and an ordained Catholic priest.
 

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