Rev. Stephen M. Koeth, C.S.C. (University of Notre Dame) will discuss his book Crabgrass Catholicism: How Suburbanization Transformed Faith and Politics in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press, 2025) alongside commentators Sean Dempsey, S.J. (Loyola Marymount University); Paige Glotzer (University of Florida); and Michelle Nickerson (Loyola University Chicago).
The seminar is free and open to all.
From the publisher
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 15 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 U.S. 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 suburbanization, Crabgrass Catholicism will be of particular interest to urban historians, scholars of American Catholicism and religious studies, and Catholic clergy and laity.
Inaugurated in 1980 and named in 2023 to honor the Cushwa Center’s founding director, the Jay P. Dolan Seminar in American Religion convenes each semester at the University of Notre Dame to discuss a notable book recently published in the field. Along with faculty and graduate students from Notre Dame, scholars from throughout the Midwest and beyond travel to campus to attend as invited guests of the Cushwa Center. Joining the list of authors whose work has been chosen for the Dolan Seminar is recognized as a distinct honor among scholars of American religion.
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