Catholic Intellectuals And Conservative Politics In America 1950 1985

At the end of World War II, conservatism was a negligible element in U.S. politics, but by 1980 it had risen to a dominant position. Patrick Allitt helps explain the remarkable growth of the contemporary conservative movement in the light of Catholic history in the United States. Allitt focuses on the role of individual Catholics against a backdrop of volatile cultural change, showing how such figures as William F. Buckley, Jr., Garry Wills, John T. Noonan, Jr., Michael Novak, John Lukacs, Thomas Molnar, Russell Kirk, Clare Boothe Luce, Ellen Wilson, Charles Rice, and James McFadden forged a potent anti-liberal intellectual tradition. Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America, 1950-1985 is much more than a history of conservative Catholics, for it illuminates critical themes in postwar American society. As Allitt narrates the interplay of liberal and conservative politics among Catholics, he unfolds a history both intricate and sweeping. After describing how New Conservatism was shaped in the 1950s by William F. Buckley, Jr., and an older generation of Catholic thinkers including Ross Hoffman and Francis Graham Wilson, Allitt traces the range of Catholic responses to the cataclysmic events of the 1960s: the election ofJohn F. Kennedy, the civil rights movement, the decolonization of Africa, Supreme Court decisions on school prayer, the war in Vietnam, and nuclear arms proliferation. He shows how the transformation of the Church prompted by the Second Vatican Council not only intensified existing divisions among Catholics but also shattered the unity of the Catholic conservative movement. Turning to the 1970s, Allitt chronicles bitter controversies concerning family roles, contraception, abortion, and gay rights. Next, comparing the work of John Lukacs, Thomas Molnar, Garry Wills, and Michael Novak from the 1950s through the 1980s, Allitt demonstrates how individual Catholic conservatives drew different lessons from similar contingencies. He concludes by assessing recent ideological shifts within American Catholicism, using as his test case the conservative resistance to the Catholic Bishops' 1983 Pastoral Letter on Nuclear Weapons. Offering new insight into the subtle interplay between religion and politics, Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America, 1950-1985 will be engaging reading for everyone interested in the postwar evolution of American politics and culture.

From the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, an impressive group of English speaking intellectuals converted to Catholicism. Outspoken and gifted, they intended to show the fallacies of religious skeptics and place Catholicism, once again, at the center of western intellectual life. The lives of individual converts—such as John Henry Newman, G. K. Chesterton, Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day—have been well documented, but Patrick Allitt has written the first account of converts' collective impact on Catholic intellectual life. His book is also the first to characterize the distinctive style of Catholicism they helped to create and the first to investigate the extensive contacts among Catholic convert writers in the United States and Britain. Allitt explains how, despite the Church's dogmatic style and hierarchical structure, converts working in the areas of history, science, literature, and philosophy maintained that Catholicism was intellectually liberating. British and American converts followed each other's progress closely, visiting each other and sending work back and forth across the Atlantic. The outcome of their labors was not what the converts had hoped. Although they influenced the Catholic Church for three or four generations, they were unable to restore it to the central place in Western intellectual life that it had enjoyed before the Reformation.

Identifying the major trends and telling moments within both major denominations and other less formal religious movements, Allitt asks how these religious groups have shaped, and been shaped by, some of the most important and divisive political issues and events of the last half century, including the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, feminism and the sexual revolution, abortion rights, and the antinuclear and environmentalist movements.

Situating the church within the context of post-World War II globalization and the Cold War, American Catholicism Transformed draws on previously untapped archival sources to provide deep background to developments within the American Catholic Church in relationship to American society at large. Shaped by anti-communist sentiment and responsive to American cultural trends, the Catholic community adopted "strategies of domestic containment," stressing the close unity between the Church and the "American way of life." A focus on the unchanging character of God's law as expressed in social hierarchies of authority, race, and gender provided a public visage of unity and uniformity. However, the emphasis on American values mainstreamed into the community the political values of personal rights, equality, acceptance of the arms race, and muted the Church's inherited social vision. The result was a deep ambivalence over the forces of secularization. The Catholic community entered a transitional stage in which "those on the right" and "those on the left" battled for control of the Church's vision. International networking, reform of religious life among women, international congresses of the laity, the institutionalization of the liturgical movement, and the burgeoning civil right movement positioned the community to receive the Vatican Council in a distinctly American way. During the Second Vatican Council, the American bishops and theological experts gradually adopted the reforming currents of the world-wide Church. This convergence of international and national forces of renewal -- and resistance to them -- says Joseph Chinnici, will continue to shape the American Catholic community's identity in the twenty-first century.

The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History brings together in one two-volume set the record of the nation's values, aspirations, anxieties, and beliefs as expressed in both everyday life and formal bodies of thought. Over the past twenty years, the field of cultural history has moved to the center of American historical studies, and has come to encompass the experiences of ordinary citizens in such arenas as reading and religious practice as well as the accomplishments of prominent artists and writers. Some of the most imaginative scholarship in recent years has emerged from this burgeoning field. The scope of the volume reflects that development: the encyclopedia incorporates popular entertainment ranging from minstrel shows to video games, middlebrow ventures like Chautauqua lectures and book clubs, and preoccupations such as "Perfectionism" and "Wellness" that have shaped Americans' behavior at various points in their past and that continue to influence attitudes in the present. The volumes also make available recent scholarly insights into the writings of political scientists, philosophers, feminist theorists, social reformers, and other thinkers whose works have furnished the underpinnings of Americans' civic activities and personal concerns. Anyone wishing to understand the hearts and minds of the inhabitants of the United States from the early days of settlement to the twenty-first century will find the encyclopedia invaluable.

From the Founding Fathers through the present, Christianity has exercised powerful influence in the United States—from its role in shaping politics and social institutions to its hand in inspiring art and culture. The Encyclopedia of Christianity in the United States outlines the myriad roles Christianity has played and continues to play. This masterful five-volume reference work includes biographies of major figures in the Christian church in the United States, influential religious documents and Supreme Court decisions, and information on theology and theologians, denominations, faith-based organizations, immigration, art—from decorative arts and film to music and literature—evangelism and crusades, the significant role of women, racial issues, civil religion, and more. The first volume opens with introductory essays that provide snapshots of Christianity in the U.S. from pre-colonial times to the present, as well as a statistical profile and a timeline of key dates and events. Entries are organized from A to Z. The final volume closes with essays exploring impressions of Christianity in the United States from other faiths and other parts of the world, as well as a select yet comprehensive bibliography. Appendices help readers locate entries by thematic section and author, and a comprehensive index further aids navigation.

Roman Catholicism in the United States: A Thematic History takes the reader beyond the traditional ways scholars have viewed and recounted the story of the Catholic Church in America. The collection covers unfamiliar topics such as anti-Catholicism, rural Catholicism, Latino Catholics, and issues related to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the U.S. government. The book continues with fascinating discussions on popular culture (film and literature), women religious, and the work of U.S. missionaries in other countries. The final section of the books is devoted to Catholic social teaching, tackling challenging and sometimes controversial subjects such as the relationship between African American Catholics and the Communist Party, Catholics in the civil rights movement, the abortion debate, issues of war and peace, and Vatican II and the American Catholic Church. Roman Catholicism in the United States examines the history of U.S. Catholicism from a variety of perspectives that transcend the familiar account of the immigrant, urban parish, which served as the focus for so many American Catholics during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries.