Seminar News

Summer Hart: I love the words “crabgrass” and “Catholicism” in your title and the undercurrent of discord this juxtaposition evokes. What inspired this title?

Stephen M. Koeth: I’m thrilled that people are enjoying the title which is an homage to one of my Columbia mentors, the great Kenneth T. Jackson, whose seminal Crabgrass Frontier (Oxford, 1985) helped launch the subfield of suburban history. Urban historians are quick to pick up on the reference which signals my focus on suburban Catholicism. But even for general readers there’s not only the pleasant alliteration and the allusion to suburban lawns but, as you note, a nod to an undercurrent of discord. I suppose one of the questions of the book is whether or not, like crabgrass, suburban Catholicism spread quickly but was not as vital it appeared to be.

SH: You talk of the symbiotic relationship between neighborhood and parish in urban immigrant communities through World War II. In what ways did the expansion of post-war suburbia shift the center of Catholic life? What was altered, gained, or lost?

SMK: Through the 1950s, the spatial boundaries and public life of neighborhoods in the urban north were delineated and formed by parish boundaries and by the ethno-religious celebrations of their residents. The parish plant, with its church, school, rectory, and convent stood at both the physical and psychological heart of the urban neighborhood. But in the suburbs, the single-family detached home was the center of life and, especially in the earliest years of suburbanization, parishes gathered for Mass and religious education in temporary spaces. The parishioners who pioneered these suburban parishes often felt a greater sense of ownership over their parish and were prepared for greater leadership in the Church. But the parish also lost its thick ethnic culture and its aura of sacred permanence, changes which made passing on the faith to the next generation increasingly difficult.

SH: In what ways did postwar Catholic suburbanization set the stage for today’s culture wars and political polarization?

SMK: Prior to postwar suburbanization, the urban Catholic parish was a stronghold for Democratic machine politics and for Roosevelt’s New Deal. But in the postwar period Catholics moved up into the ranks of the college-educated middle class and moved out of their urban enclaves into the burgeoning suburbs. There, Catholic voters were driven by different issues including concerns about skyrocketing suburban tax rates, the costs of maintaining a separate parochial school system, and the place of religion and morals in public education, among other issues. Although suburban Catholics became swing voters more than reliable Republican voters, I argue that the conservative coalition building role they played, and the tactics they employed, in battles over state funding for parochial schools and prayer in public schools paved the way for the role Catholics would play in the emerging culture wars.

Summer Hart: You were a rapporteur for The City seminar. Did this experience influence or support your scholarship?

SMK: Absolutely. Working under The City seminar’s superb chair, Lisa Keller, I was introduced to a vibrant community of scholars, from various academic disciplines, who were dedicated to the study of the metropolis, its history, and its current triumphs and trials. I had originally planned to write a dissertation more squarely within the realms of political history. But hearing seminar presentations on works-in-progress and participating in seminar discussions helped reframe my research agenda and ultimately gave rise to this book on Catholic suburbanization.

Common Measures was supported by the Warner Publication Fund.

825 | Latinx Studies

Founding Chairs: Lori Flores and Carlos Alonso Nugent

This seminar is devoted to the study of people with ties to Latin America who have become part of the US through colonization and/or migration. Rejecting the top-down dynamics that often animate area studies, the Seminar instead draws on the grassroots efforts of Latinx communities to center their histories, cultural production, and political interventions […]