2001/03/01 by Marjule Anne Drury · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #European Political History Analysis #American Constitutional Law and Politics #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity #Psychological nativism #Politics #Optimal distinctiveness theory #Secularization #Conceptualization #Scholarship #History #Emancipation #Sociology #Gender studies #Political science #Law
paper · doi:10.2307/3654412
openalex publication_date 2001/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
The past two decades have seen an efflorescence of works exploring cultural anti-Catholicism in a variety of national contexts. But so far, historians have engaged in little comparative analysis. This article is a first step, examining recent historical literature on modern British and American anti-Catholicism, in order to trace the similarities and distinctiveness of the turn-of-the-century German case. Historians are most likely to be acquainted with American nativism, the German Kulturkampf , continental anticlericalism, and the problems of Catholic Emancipation and the Irish Question in Britain. Many of the themes and functions of anti-Catholic discourse in the West transcended national and temporal boundaries. In each case, the conceptualization of a Catholic ‘other’ is a testament to the tenacity of confessionalism in an age formerly characterized as one of inexorable secularization. Contemporary observers often agreed that religious culture—like history, race, ethnicity, geography, and local custom—played a role in the self-evident distinctiveness of peoples and nations, in their political forms, economic performance, and intellectual and artistic contributions. We will see how confessionalism remained a lens through which intellectuals and ordinary citizens, whether attached or estranged from religious commitments, viewed political, economic, and cultural change.