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This essay examines the longer literary history of religious nativism that coalesced in early US perceptions of the Caribbean. Reading Leonora Sansay's 1808 Secret History alongside antebellum anti-Catholic propaganda, it demonstrates how early Americans relied on depictions of the revolutionary West Indies to validate ongoing Protestant concerns about Catholicism's perceived threat to moral and racial purity. Portrayed as spaces of transgression among diversely raced bodies, Sansay's Saint Domingue and Cuba anticipate the anxieties that would arise in later anti-Catholic writing. Such depictions illuminate a more geographically diffuse and historically prolonged discourse of nativist thinking, one wherein the revolutionary West Indies comes to serve as a touchstone for forging an enduring partnership between whiteness and an implicitly Protestant US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines Hawthorne's The Marble Faun as an early expression of (post)secular imagining. Scholars have tended to frame Hawthorne's engagement with religion as yet another example of the ambivalence that drives much of his writing. On the one hand, they identify the persistence of religious critique in his novels—his criticism of Puritanism in The Scarlet Letter or Transcendentalism in The Blithedale Romance, for example. On the other hand, they have noted his fascination with such traditions, offering readings that uncover the historical specificity of his Puritan sources and his temporary investment in Transcendentalism. Rich as they are, such readings tend to focus on his engagement with these specific religious traditions rather than note his novels' oscillation between enchantment and disenchantment. This essay takes up this charge by examining The Marble Faun's depiction of Catholicism, a depiction that critics have similarly read in terms of Hawthorne's admiration or criticism of Catholicism. This essay suggests, instead, that both impulses represent Hawthorne's lasting search for what secular studies philosopher Charles Taylor calls "a third way"; that is, a space between orthodoxy and unbelief. Rather than locate The Marble Faun as another instance of Hawthorne's chronic ambiguity, then, this essay locates it as a prime example of the spiritual tensions marking our "secular age." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates a sexual scandal that rocked the English Catholic Church in the Victorian era. Though forgotten today, Monsignor Thomas John Capel was one of the most famous clerics in the Victorian Church. His career fell into turmoil when, in 1879, Cardinal Henry Edward Manning launched a diocesan commission to investigate charges of sexual misconduct involving three women. Drawing on a series of rich and as yet unexplored archival sources, the article charts the career of Thomas Capel and assesses the nature, aims and outcomes of the Church-run inquiry into his conduct. Through an analysis of the actions not just of Capel but of Church authorities both in Westminster and in Rome, we gain a revealing window onto sexual scandal and the Church's response to it in the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationships between Catholic women religious and the bishops in the mid-nineteenth century, exploring the questions of authority and jurisdiction over women's religious organizations that spread across various dioceses. To demonstrate this, a case study is presented of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (the IHMs), whose members were located in Michigan and Pennsylvania. It explores how the expansion of the IHMs caused a gendered crisis of authority among local bishops. This study occurs within a larger history of questions of jurisdiction over women's religious organizations and racial bias within the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century. It then analyzes how the bishops used the racial identity of Mother Theresa Maxis Duchemin, the congregation's original superior, as a weapon to regain control over the IHMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses passage 10:37 from the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament of the Bible, which concerns love of Jesus Christ and love of family. It particularly explores this passage in relation to the Catholic and Protestant debates concerning convents and cloistering during the Victorian era. The author addresses the views of various Anti-Catholic polemicists, and she comments on stories of escaped nuns. A reading of Matthew 10:37 by evangelical commentator Thomas Scott is also considered.

Mary Francis Cusack (1829–1899) was a prolific writer, historian and publisher, producing over forty books during her life-time. She was a vocal supporter of the Land League, an advocate for female education and an early believer in the Marian apparitions at Knock. She was also, for much of her career, an enclosed nun. Her religious identity was essential to the literary persona which she cultivated throughout her career. Through her books and the press, she relied upon and adapted common tropes associated with women religious in order to give her opinions weight. By doing so she was, perversely, able to write about topics normally off-limits to women religious. Even after converting to Methodism in later life, her identity as a former nun was integral to how she presented herself. Cusack's fame and success provides a valuable insight into the position and visibility of religious women in nineteenth-century society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An index to the December 2020 edition of the scholarly periodical "American Historical Review" is presented.

The article presents an author/title index to the current issue of "American Historical Review."

In 1829 Mother Catherine Spalding of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky, allowed her community of Catholic women religious to wear a white collar as a part of their habit. The decision provoked a brief but passionate dispute between Spalding and her local bishop, Benedict Joseph Flaget of nearby Bardstown, Kentucky. Bishop Flaget feared the seemingly anodyne garment revealed Spalding's vanity and unruliness. Spalding insisted on her obedience to proper religious authority, but she nonetheless defended her conduct and the collar's merits. Her spirited defense of the collar shows that a skillful mother superior could marshal the gendered language of authority and propriety to her order's advantage. Moreover, the contest between Spalding and Flaget demonstrates that as Catholics sought to define their presence in the early United States, influential women religious like Spalding emerged as the "public face" of nineteenth-century American Catholicism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tucker's depiction of Katie keeps one foot in the past - in aiming to depict Katie in her own setting - and one foot in the present - in reflecting on her life through a twenty-first century lens. Tucker concludes with a brief reflection on knowing Katie mostly through the available sources of Martin's letters, and also through Katie's few letters, all concerned with business dealings. While some theologians rose at four-o-clock in the morning for prayers, Katie rose at such an hour to begin her work, meriting Katie the title "morning star of Wittenberg" by Martin (p. 120). [Extracted from the article]

“Anti-Catholicism has always been the pornography of the Puritan,” noticed Richard Hofstadter in his famous essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” (21). This observation, made in the 1960s, draws upon centuries-old tradition of casting Catholics in the role of sexual perverts, not only in American politics but also in British politics and culture. Through the study of anti-Catholic Victorian writing we can analyse the particular crux embodied in Hofstadter's pithy remark: a mixture of moral superiority combined with prurient enjoyment of the described practices it purports to condemn. This part of my study is dedicated to the Victorian novel and its depictions of Catholic sexuality, which, as the novelists often suggested, was either stifled and warped or rampant, but either way it transgressed the boundaries delineated by the Protestant family ideal. It also discusses Victorian gender roles and the ways in which Catholicism was allegedly undermining them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the central influence of anti-Catholicism upon English- Canadian nationalism in the first third of the twentieth century. Anti-Catholicism provided an existing rhetorical and ideological tradition and framework within which public figures, intellectuals, Protestant church leaders and other Canadians communicated their diverse visions of an ideal Canada. The study of anti-Catholicism problematises the rigid separation that many scholars have posited between a conservative ethnic nationalism and a progressive civic nationalism. Often times these very civic values were inextricable from a context of Britishness. In addition, anti-Catholicism was not simply about theological differences between Protestants and Catholics. Instead this theological thread often intersected with the perceived socio-political problems that Catholics and Catholicism posed. Hostility to Catholicism was not limited only to fraternal organisations such as the Orange Order; indeed the importance of anti-Catholicism as a component of Canadian nationalism lies in its presence across the political and intellectual spectrum. Catholicism was perceived to inculcate values antithetical to British traditions of freedom and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

White supremacist groups operate as secret societies but want to extend their racist vision to the public. This article examines the duality of secrecy and publicity in such organizations through a case study of the massive Ku Klux Klan in the United States in the 1920s. We show how characteristics of fraternalism – exclusivity, secrecy and firm boundaries – conflicted with the Klan's agenda to spread a message of racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Catholicism to society at large. We draw on recent literature on cultural scenes, performance, and audience to explain how the Klan used layers of supportive practices to both secure fraternal brotherhood and shape racial politics beyond its boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of several nativist novels by U.S. author Julia McNair Wright is presented including "Almost a Nun," "Priest and Nun," and "Under the Yoke and Other Tales." It describes the settings of the books, specifically interior spaces, and the symbolism of women as central characters in the plots of the books. It examines the themes of anti-Catholicism within the books, particularly what Wright viewed as the infiltration of Catholics of U.S. society.

This article explores how Luther used letters in the service of the Reformation. Letters were not ‘private’ in the sense we might now assume, but were forwarded to others, read aloud, and shared; Luther also used them tactically. In particular, the essay considers Luther's correspondence with Spalatin, the Saxon Elector's court chaplain and secretary, whose friendship brokered the key political support of the Elector Frederick the Wise and so secured Luther's safety. The omissions, emphases, linkages and emotional tone of the letters (which were carefully kept and annotated by Spalatin) reveal much about the friendship between the two very different men. When Luther was in hiding in the Wartburg, Spalatin was his chief contact with the outside world, and he was reliant on him for getting his manuscripts and for supplying the medicines he needed, a dependence he did not always find easy. Yet it is also in the dialogue with Spalatin that we can see Luther developing his own identity. From the first biographies of Luther, the letters (soon published) were regularly used to authenticate the standard heroic narrative of the Reformation; but if read as ‘ego documents’ and analysed as part of a complex exchange, they can reveal far more about Luther and the dynamics of his friendships—and thus of the forces at work in the Reformation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the early nineteenth century trial of William Hogan, a popular yet controversial Catholic priest, for assault on Mary Connell, a domestic servant and former member of Hogan’s parish. This article is less interested in the facts surrounding Hogan’s alleged assault on Connell as the available evidence is insufficient to evaluate Hogan’s guilt or innocence. Still, the detailed trial transcript that emerges from this case allows us to do two things at once. It enables us to explore the social history of the most important division within the American Catholic church and of the complex relationships between clergymen and working class women. Secondly, the case reveals how anti-catholic narratives of sexual violence found expression in the courtroom. The Hogan case provides a rare case study of how the discourses of religious conflict, nativism, class, and gender came together to define the specific conditions under which a woman could be raped and a man convicted of rape, in the antebellum courtroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Born in Ireland in 1842, Edith O'Gorman immigrated to America where she joined the Sisters of Charity in 1862. In January 1868, O'Gorman left or 'escaped' from this convent, and in 1871 she wrote Trials and Persecutions of Miss Edith O'Gorman which described the cruelty she endured. O'Gorman began to speak against the alleged horrors of convent life, and eventually travelled to England in 1881. This article deals with O'Gorman's lectures throughout England which attacked sisterhoods. Some individuals, fearing that convents would harm the Protestant character of the Anglican Church, applauded her condemnation of convents, while others protested and threatened her with violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on Daniel O. Cohn who is an associate professor of history at Case Western Reserve University. His publications include "Pillars of Salt," "Monuments of Grace: New England Crime Literature ,"and the "Origins of American Popular Culture, 1674-1860" and '"The Female Marine' and Related Works: Narratives of Cross-Dressing and Urban Vice in America's Early Republic." He is currently working on a book about the destruction of the Charlestown convent.

The article discusses poems Nobel Sisters and Sister Maude composed by Christina Rossetti after she began working at Highgate with the Church Penitentiary Movement. Sister relationships characterized by antagonism and competitiveness is said to form a stark contrast to her earlier work Goblin Market. They raise a series of questions on Rossetti's attitude toward sororal relationships and women's communities. The two poems suggest that Rossetti's attitude toward communities of women changed dramatically following her experience at Highgate.

Discusses the issues on the relationship between religion and education in 19th century England. Questionable influence of Roman Catholic girls on non-Catholic girls attending convent schools; Changes to the view that convent schools constitute a risk to the health of Protestantism because of additional opportunities for the country's youth to receive a good education.

Defines the relationship between religiosity and female sexuality in Protestantism. Discussion of literal constructions depicting religious ideologies of womanhood; Evaluation of nun-as-prostitute figures in Puritan theology and literature; Disclosure on the meaning of wearing veils; Parallelism between monastic life in convents and brothels.

Drawing on a necrology, or book of the dead, kept by an Ursuline community in Brown County, Ohio, during 1845-1930, discusses the sisters' efforts at creating a communal identity linking them "to a larger tradition of belief and heritage" as a way of providing nuns still living among the community the spiritual strength to continue their work.

Explores the significance of the Protestant Victorian's vilification of the Catholic priest during the nineteenth century in England. Reference to a newspaper article published in April 1989 entitled `Priest Stole My Wife'; How the Victorian readership viewed the article; How the Victorian public, both males and females, viewed the Catholic priest.

Atrocity tales recounted by deprogrammed former members of controversial religions constitute one of the epistemological cornerstones of anti-cult ideology. Although scholars of new religious movements have often criticized these testimonies, empirical research in this area has been minimal. The present study systematically contrasts the attitudes of former members of such groups and finds, as certain social scientists have predicted, a high correlation between negative, cult-stereotypical attitudes and exposure to anti-cult socialization. The paper also sets these findings in the context of a historical analysis that examines the continuities between anti-cult, anti-Catholic, and anti-Mormon atrocity tales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the particular social ingredients which contributed to the formation and rise of the American Protective Association. The association was founded on the March 13, 1887 at Clinton, Iowa. The general political arena of the last few decades of the nineteenth century was notorious for scheming hypocracy, trickery and fraud. Among the politicians whose reputations were far above reproach, especially in municipal politics, were many who claimed membership in the Roman Catholic Church. The entrepreneurs recognized in the religious fanaticism which prevailed in many places, a way of dividing the labor force and of weakening or dissolving the labor movement, so they arranged their hiring programs on this divide and conquer technique. Another factor which was not conducive to harmonious living was a combination of ethnic factors which fomented into rivalry between the Catholics of different national origins. In these instances their traditional national prejudices were stronger than their common faith, and they began charges and counter-charges among themselves of plots to overthrow the American government.

The present interest in the question of the reunion of the Churches, as evidenced by the Stockholm and Lausanne Conferences, by the work of the Federal Council, by the community church movement, by the overtures for union between particular denominations, such as the Universalists and Congregationalists, and the Congregationalists and Christians, the formation of the United Church of Canada, and many other signs and tokens, suggests an inquiry into the relations existing among the various bodies of Christians at the period in our national history which was perhaps marked by more cooperation and less animosity than any other prior to our own time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]