Book Discussion: Crabgrass Catholicism by Stephen M. Koeth

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 liberalization. Yet in Crabgrass Catholicism, Stephen M. Koeth demonstrates that the liberalization of the Church was instead the product of the mass suburbanization that began some fifteen years earlier.

Koeth argues that postwar suburbanization revolutionized 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. 

View Crabgrass Catholicism: How Suburbanization Transformed Faith and Politics in Postwar America.

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About the author

Fr. Stephen M. Koeth, C.S.C. is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Notre Dame. He is an urban, religious, and political historian of twentieth-century America. His research focuses on U.S. Catholic involvement in postwar metropolitan development, including urban renewal projects, public housing, and suburbanization, and the effects of these interactions on Catholic faith and politics.

View Stephen's full bio here.