Book Review: "Anti-Catholicism in America, 1620-1860"

This book, published by Cambridge University Press in 2017, is an episodic history of aspects of Anti-Catholicism in the British American Colonies and the United States of America from the year after The New York Times says our history begins until the year before the Civil War begins. According to the publisher:

Using fears of Catholicism as a mechanism through which to explore the contours of Anglo-American understandings of freedom, Anti-Catholicism in America, 1620–1860 reveals the ironic role that anti-Catholicism played in defining and sustaining some of the core values of American identity, values that continue to animate our religious and political discussions today. Farrelly explains how that bias helped to shape colonial and antebellum cultural understandings of God, the individual, salvation, society, government, law, national identity, and freedom. In so doing, Anti-Catholicism in America, 1620–1860 provides contemporary observers with a framework for understanding what is at stake in the debate over the place of Muslims and other non-Christian groups in American society.

• Uses anti-Catholicism as an opportunity to explore the various Protestant groups - Puritans and Pilgrims - that were dominant on the colonial and early-American landscape
• Shows how anti-Catholicism was both an expression of, and an abandonment of, the dominant values of the colonial and early-American period
• Provides a useful distillation of the narrative on anti-Catholicism in early America, while citations point them to the pertinent historiography

Please note that I purchased my copy of this book.

Anti-Catholicism in America, 1620-1860 received excellent advance praise and this review provides an effective precis of the book. The book is very neatly designed with each chapter titled with a contemporary quotation for the topic addressed, a vignette or example of the issues involved in each chapter, and a chapter overview and a chapter conclusion and notes following:

Table of Contents

Preface

1. "It Hath Been Found Inconsistent with the Safety and Welfare of this Protestant Kingdom": Anti-Catholicism in Old England and New

• Chapter Overview,
• The Reformation Briefly Considered
• Protestantism, Briefly Considered
• English Protestantism, Briefly Considered
• [NOTE: NO "Catholicism, Briefly Considered"]
• Calvinism and Liberty
• The Dominion of New England and the Protestant Interest
• The Power of Print and the Protestant Interest
• Chapter Conclusion
• Notes

2. "This Province is God be Thanked very Peaceable and Quiet": Anti-Catholicism and Colonial Catholics in the Seventeenth Century

• Chapter Overview
• The English Origins of Colonial America's Catholics
• The Catholic Calverts and the Puzzle of Anti-Catholicism
• Calvert's Early (and Unsuccessful) Strategy for Peace
• The Anti-Catholic Origins of Religious Toleration
• The Demise of the Catholic Calverts and the Rise of Contractarian Government
• Chapter Conclusion 
• Notes

3. "The Common Word Then Was: 'No King, No Popery'": Anti-Catholicism and the American Revolution

• Chapter Overview
• The Rhetorical Power of Popery
• Maryland's Revolutionary Reluctance
• Curbing the Growth of Popery
• Catholic Constitutionalism in Eighteenth Century Maryland
• Catholic Discourse in a Secular Context
• Chapter Conclusion
• Notes

4. "The Catholic Religion is Modified by the Spirit of the Time in America": Anti-Catholicism and the New Republic

• Chapter Overview
• Liberty, Not Toleration
• Religious Liberty in the States
• American Gets a Catholic Bishop
• Catholic Republicanism
• Lay Trusteeism in Philadelphia
• Chapter Conclusion
• Notes

5. "Those Now Pouring in Upon us . . . are Wholly of Another Kind in Morals and Intellect": Anti-Catholicism in the Age of Immigration

• Chapter Overview
• Unitarians React to the Convent Burning (Ursuline Convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1834)
• The Bible(s) and the Schools
• The Philadelphia Bible Riots
• The Impact of the Publishing Industry
• Chapter Conclusion
• Notes

6. "The Benumbing and Paralyzing Influence of Romanism is such, as to Disqualifying a Person for the Relish and Enjoyment of Liberty": Anti-Catholicism and American Politics

• Chapter Overview
• Catholics, Abolitionists, and Slavery
• The Regional Nature of Anti-Catholicism: The South
• The Regional Nature of Anti-Catholicism: The West
• Nativism and Politics
• Chapter Conclusion
• Notes

Epilogue

• Notes

Index

As I noted above, this is an episodic discussion and analysis of anti-Catholicism in the Colonial, early Republic, and pre-Civil War eras--and I'm not sure that the disparate parts of this analysis add up to a comprehensive or comprehensible whole. Farrelly never analyses Catholic political thought: she quotes Robert Cardinal Bellarmine once and never mentions his disagreements with King James I on the Divine Right of Kings, with his support of the sovereignty of the people and their right to consent to be governed and other Catholic ideas about freedom, the "two swords" of secular and religious governance, etc. She grants the ideas of the defenders of the "Protestant Interest" complete sway and never presents an opposing view from any Catholic defender. 

On a scale of one to five, I'd give it a three and a half. Some interesting analysis, good notes--I wish there was a bibliography or list of works for further reading--and a good organization structure, if episodic. I did find a book in the notes to order because I do not know that much about the "Dominion of New England" efforts of Charles I and James II to maintain control of the colonies: The Glorious Revolution in America by David S. Lovejoy (The Wesleyan University Press edition of 1987).

I wonder if Farrelly will continue the history of anti-Catholicism through to the twentieth century. I rather hope not. You might recall that I read and reviewed her book Papist Patriots: The Making of American Catholic Identity (Oxford University Press, 2012) here and here. I appreciate Farrelly's historical narrative more than her sociological/political theorizing.