Catholic Adherents Research Articles

Revisiting Durkheim: Social Integration and Suicide Clusters in U.S. Counties, 2006–2019

Research dating back to Durkheim’s Suicide has linked high suicide rates to low social integration. Less research has examined community vulnerability to suicide clusters—characterized by an unusually high number of suicides in a time and place. In this study, we draw from recent qualitative research to hypothesize that social integration is positively associated with the emergence of suicide clusters, in contrast to the classic Durkheimian hypothesis. To test this hypothesis, we examine the association between three measures of social integration (divorce, Catholic adherence, and residential stability) and a novel measure of suicide clusters in 469 U.S. counties from 2006 to 2019 using data from the American Community Survey (ACS), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and Religious Congregations and Membership Study (RCMS). We find that while social integration is negatively associated with suicide rates, social integration is positively associated with the emergence of suicide clusters. These findings shed light on the dual nature of social integration as both potentially protective and harmful for suicide.

The role of religious contexts on hate crimes, 2003–2017

AbstractObjectiveCombining insights from socio‐criminological theories of (hate) crimes and the moral communities perspective, this article examines how the religious makeup of a county—evangelical Protestant, mainline Protestant, and Catholic adherence rates—affects county‐level hate crime patterns.MethodsZero‐inflated negative binomial regressions were conducted on a unique county‐level data set that included reported hate crimes, religious adherence rates, and related correlates of hate crimes for three distinct temporal periods: 2003–2007, 2008–2012, and 2013–2017.ResultsResults demonstrate that a county's total adherence rate, mainline Protestant rate and, to a lesser degree, Catholic adherence rate are associated with fewer hate crimes. We find no evidence that the evangelical Protestant adherence rate is associated with the number of hate crimes.ConclusionThese results support the moral communities hypothesis, extend research on the religion–crime nexus, and highlight the distinction between religious and secular organizations in community‐level crime patterns, particularly hate crimes.

Религиозный институт как составляющая социальной и экономической сферы

The subject of the article is the peculiarities of functioning of the structural components of the major religious institution, the identification and substantiation of the degree of its significance in the social and economic development of a country on the example of the Roman Catholic Church of Austria (RCCA). The aim of the work is a comprehensive characterization of manifestations of economic, social, culture-forming role of the leading religious organization at the national level, using the methods of processing statistical and empirical data adopted in economic and regional-confessional studies. It is shown that in Austria, since the beginning of the 21st century, there has been a sharp decline in the number of persons who remain members of the national Christian Church. The RCCA has an annual quantitative loss in the number of parishioners: 1–1.5% of their total number. Over a 10-year period (2009–2019), the proportion of Catholic adherents in Austria has fallen from 62.2 to 56%, according to calculations based on official reports. In this study, the territorial concentration coefficient for the parishes of the RCC was calculated and gave a relatively low value, indicating the accessibility of Catholic parishes to the population in various regions of Austria in terms of social and other activities organized on their premises. This indicator remains stable over time. The RCCA is currently represented in the country by a dense network of parishes (3014 as of 2019). The basis of the church-administrative territorial division at the regional level consists of two archdioceses and seven dioceses, the boundaries of which fully coincide with the federal states of Austria. This fact allows us to raise the question of the degree of influence of RCCA structures on the development of individual regions of the country, including through the implementation of socially significant activities, partially duplicating state functions that receive budgetary funding. The RCCA also has a traditional focus on social responsibility for Christian national churches in Europe, which is related to facilitating the adaptation of migrants. Activities contributing to this goal include German as a foreign language courses in individual parishes, temporary housing, employment assistance, etc. The model of development of the confessional space in Austria, where the leading role is played by the national RCC, has a number of distinctive characteristics that condition and confirm the high importance of the religious institution in the social and economic development of the state. The presented experience of Austria can be useful for the leadership of religious organizations in Russia, European and other countries, where the leading civilizational basis is the Christian religion.

Coping with Cross‐Pressures: The Seamless Garment in Catholic Political Behavior

The Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination in the United States, yet political science lacks a comprehensive account of how the cross‐pressures created by its policy prescriptions structure Catholic political behavior. Because Catholicism's policy positions land on both sides of the contemporary partisan divide—its cultural concerns aligning with the Republican Party and its pro‐social justice stance compatible with Democratic priorities—adherence to Church teaching creates electoral dilemmas for Catholic voters. By juxtaposing existing work on Catholic political behavior with the psychological literature on cognitive dissonance, we form expectations about Catholic adherence to Church policy prescriptions and its implications for electoral choice. We focus empirically on “Seamless Garment Catholics” (SGCs)—those Catholics who share the Church's policy positions—finding that seamless‐garment views are uncommon among Catholic voters, are more common among religiously committed and Latino Catholics, and are discouraged by ties to the two major parties. SGCs are more likely than other Catholics to employ psychological coping mechanisms, such as avoidance and selective perception, to reduce Church‐inspired cognitive dissonance. Our research provides insight into an important electoral bloc that is cross‐pressured uniquely by its faith commitments.

Lying in Early Modern English Culture: From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance by Andrew Hadfield

 Reviews narrator, the tragic story from Ovid that sends him to sleep, and the mysterious man in black. Here, B. S. W. Barootes sheds light on the therapeutic benefits of idle activities, including reading; and Rebecca Davies explores the recuperative work of sleep. Ardis Butterfield’s valuable retrospective of the book’s contents completes the framework begun by Fumo’s excellent Introduction. Butterfield reconfigures some of the key features of the Book of the Duchess—including its literary allusions, referencing of lyric, and shape-shiing—as an archive that memorializes Blanche by allowing access to her memory not as an inert image of an irretrievable past but as a living affect assimilated to the continuing present. U  K P B Lying in Early Modern English Culture: From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance. By A H. Oxford: Oxford University Press. . xvi+ pp. £. ISBN ––––. ‘[T]he opposite of truth hath many-many shapes.’ Montaigne’s observation in his essay ‘Of Lyers’ could serve as an apt motto for Andrew Hadfield’s wide-ranging study of lying in early modern England (where it is quoted on page ). Attending to various religious, rhetorical, and political contexts, Hadfield’s ‘cultural [. . .] history of lying’ (p. ) persuasively demonstrates that early modern conceptions of mendacity were marked by their plurality. A recognition of the noxious effects of lying existed alongside a politics that exploited dissemblance and a literary culture that understood the power of persuasive fictions. A perceived tension between God’s authority and the power wielded by temporal rulers also played an important role in shaping the manner in which lies were used. Hadfield’s volume comprises two parts. e first of these discusses the relationship between lying and oaths: its two chapters, focusing on the Oath of Supremacy () and the Oath of Allegiance (), bookend the historical period covered by the study. Chapter  discusses the trials of omas More and Anne Boleyn, which are informed by ‘a context of oath-breaking, perjury, and lying precipitated by the Reformation’ (p. ). Hadfield’s treatment of More is especially illuminating , showing how appeals to divinity could justify dissimulation: More’s promise before God surpassed Henry’s oath in its binding force. Hadfield’s discussion of Wyatt’s poetry is likewise effective in demonstrating how a new scrutiny on spoken words inflected literary representations. In Chapter  Hadfield’s investigation of the accounts of the persecution of Roman Catholics later in the period uncovers further connections between lies, political power, and discursive practices. Whereas James’s oath demanded that it be sworn ‘according to the plain and common sense and understanding’ of its own words (quoted on page. ), Catholic adherents formulated an array of verbal dissemblance techniques that would preserve the speaker as a ‘truth-teller before God, while deliberately misleading the authorities’ (p. ). Again, Hadfield usefully places the treatises and trials of Catholics that he examines within broader literary and political contexts. e second part contains expansive and detailed case studies, showing how MLR, .,   notions of lying depended on different circumstances. Chapter  examines lying in religious contexts: it demonstrates the variety of positions adopted vis-à-vis dissemblance in the religious turmoil of the period, when a polemically stark distinction between truth and lies existed alongside strategic ‘duplicity’ in terms of religious allegiance (p. ). Hadfield turns to rhetoric, commonplacing, and poetics in Chapter , where he examines the dangers and uses of mendacity in Renaissance rhetoric, and the strategic advantage of literary fictions for Sidney. Perhaps the most compelling part of this chapter occurs when it thinks about the hermeneutic aspects of deception, particularly in addressing the relationship between lying and humanist reading practices adumbrated by Erasmus. Chapters  and  are arguably the strongest elements of the volume’s second part. e first of these, examining courtesy, lying, and politics, draws on Spenser, courtesy books, Machiavelli, and Cicero to assess the uneasily close relationship between courtly politics and dissembling; it also features a superbly nuanced reading of political lying in Marlowe’s plays. Chapter  attends to testimony, and as such allows for a wonderfully detailed account of fictive embellishments and literary archetypes...

Does Religion Hinder Creativity? A National Level Study on the Roles of Religiosity and Different Denominations.

Creativity plays an irreplaceable role in economic and technological development. It seems that religion has a negative association with creativity. If it is true, how can we interpret the rapid development of human society with religious believers comprising 81% of global population? Based on the datasets of the World Values Survey and the Global Creativity Index, this study examined the effects of different religions/denominations on national creativity, and the moderation effect of gross domestic product per capita (GDPpc) in 87 countries. The results showed that: (1) religiosity was negatively associated with creativity at national level; (2) Proportions of Protestant and Catholic adherents in a country were both positively associated with national creativity, while proportion of Islam adherents was negatively associated with national creativity; (3) GDPpc moderated the relationships of creativity with overall religiosity, proportion of Protestant adherents, and proportion of Catholic adherents. In countries with high GDPpc, national religiosity and proportion of Islam could negatively predict national creativity, and proportion of Protestants could positively predict national creativity; in countries with low GDPpc, these relationships became insignificant. These findings suggest that national religiosity hinders creativity to a certain extent. However, some denominations (i.e., Protestant and Catholic) may exert positive influences on creativity due to their religious traditions and values. The religion–creativity relationship at national level only emerges in affluent countries.

Religious Contexts and Violence in Emerging and Traditional Immigrant Destinations

Amidst both a resurgent interest in the impact of religion on social problems like crime, including its contextual effects, as well as scholarship directed toward the immigration-crime intersection, the current study examines how different religious traditions impact known violent offending uniquely in traditional versus emerging immigrant destinations. To do so, we employ negative binomial models regressing homicides, robberies, and aggravated assaults on adherence to three major religious traditions (mainline Protestant, evangelical Protestant, and Catholic), as well as immigration and other key macro-structural controls. We disaggregate our analysis for three types of United States counties in 2010: emerging, traditional, and other immigrant destinations. We find that religious traditions vary in their relationship with known violence across destination types: Catholic adherence is protective against crime (net of controls) only in established immigrant destinations, but evangelical Protestant adherence is associated with higher levels of robbery and aggravated assault in the same locales. Religious adherence has no links to violence in emerging immigrant destinations. Broadly, our findings reveal that the religious context is an important part of the evolving story of immigration, though it is multifaceted and context-dependent.

Perceptions of Religious Discrimination Among U.S. Scientists

AbstractAcademic scientists in the United States are relatively nonreligious, at least compared to the general population, and some evidence suggests that the professional culture of academic science may foster perceptions of discrimination among scientists who are religious. We examine perceptions of religious discrimination among biologists and physicists in the United States. The analysis shows that Protestant, Muslim, and adherents of “other” traditions report higher rates of religious discrimination in both biology and physics relative to those who do not identify with a religion. Jewish and Catholic adherents report higher rates of discrimination in biology but not in physics. Most of the religious identity effects among biologists are not explained away by measures of beliefs, practices, or professional and demographic characteristics. On the other hand, religious identity differences in perceptions of religious discrimination among physicists are mediated by measures of religious practice. On the whole, these findings suggest that religious identity itself is more stigmatized in biology than in physics. Results have implications for how university professors—and academic scientists in particular—relate to the broader public.

Religion and Infant Mortality in the United States: A Community‐Level Investigation of Denominational Variations in Postneonatal Deaths

AbstractAlthough a growing body of research has detected the effects of community‐level religiosity on various health outcomes, very little scholarship has examined the influence of religious ecology on infant mortality rates (IMRs). We conduct ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses on postneonatal IMRs (PNIMRs) using county‐level data from the National Center for Health Statistics Linked Birth and Infant Death Data (1990, 2000, and 2006–2010), churches and church membership data, and the Area Health Resource File. We find that while overall rates of postneonatal deaths have decreased over time, the effects of religion on this outcome have become more pronounced. Specifically, we find that counties with greater proportions of mainline Protestant and Catholic adherents exhibit significantly lower PNIMRs. We further find that a greater proportion of conservative Protestants, and especially fundamentalists, increases postneonatal infant mortality. Our findings lend additional support to cultural explanations of U.S. infant mortality.

INFLUENCE OF THE CIVIC COMMUNITY RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENT ON FAMILY POVERTY: A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS.

This study integrates research in the civic community tradition and structuralist and individualist perspectives on poverty to assess the relationship between religious-based civic community structures and family poverty in the United States. Using multilevel analyses of 2006-2008 American Community Survey, 2000 Census of Population and Housing, and 2000 Religious Congregations and Membership Survey data, results demonstrate that the presence of Mainline Protestant and Catholics adherents within communities - measured as the percentage of a community's population comprised of Mainline Protestant and Catholic adherents - is significantly and negatively associated with family poverty risks, net of other family and community factors. That is, in communities with a greater presence of Mainline Protestants and Catholics, there were also lower risks of families being in poverty. These findings suggest the importance of the ecology of religion within communities in understanding poverty outcomes for families.

Suicide, Religion, and Latinos: A Macrolevel Study of U.S. Latino Suicide Rates

Since the publication of Durkheim's Suicide more than a century ago, researchers have been examining the relationship between religion and suicide, and race/ethnicity and suicide. However, no study has examined how religion influences U.S. Latino suicide rates. This study fills a gap in the literature by applying three competing theses to the study of Latino suicide. Results show that (1) religious contextual variables significantly affect Latino suicide rates, (2) U.S.-born Latinos benefit from religious communities, regardless of denomination or measurement used, and (3) foreign-born Latinos only benefit from Catholic adherents and homogeneity.

Religion, Age, and Crime: Do Religious Traditions Differentially Impact Juvenile Versus Adult Violence?

A growing body of empirical research demonstrates that the relative presence of religious adherents at the community-level has important relationships with rates of crime and violence. Less understood is how adherence to specific religious traditions (e.g., evangelical Protestant, Catholic, mainline Protestant) is associated with rates of crime, especially across particular age groups toward which religious traditions devote varying degrees of structural and cultural resources. Using data from the Religious Congregations and Membership Survey and age-specific arrest data from the Uniform Crime Reporting program in 2010, the current study finds that the impact of religious adherence on crime varies by religious tradition and across juvenile versus adult crime. Specifically, evangelical Protestant adherence is negatively associated with juvenile but not adult violence, while Catholic adherence is associated with reduced adult but not juvenile violence, net of controls. Implications for research on religious contexts and crime, as well as policy, are discussed.

A Shot of Morality? Hispanic Immigration, Religious Contextual Characteristics, and Violence

Extant research often finds that the relative size of the Hispanic immigrant population is inversely associated with rates of crime at the macro level. Yet, few studies have empirically examined the indirect pathways through which Hispanic immigration might impact crime, especially sociocultural characteristics such as religious context. Utilizing data on known violent crimes from over 600 U.S. counties in 2010 paired with religious contextual data from the Religious Congregation and Membership Survey (RCMS), we observe that the presence of Hispanic immigrants is positively associated with community-level Catholic adherence, civically engaged religious adherence, and religious homogeneity that, in turn, are negatively associated with violent crime. Overall, religious contextual characteristics appear to significantly mediate the link between Hispanic immigration and violence at the macro level. Implications for the immigration-crime literature and broader macro-structural research are discussed.

Domesticating a Religious Import: The Jesuits and the Inculturation of the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe, 1879–1980 (review)

Reviewed by: Domesticating a Religious Import: The Jesuits and the Inculturation of the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe, 1879–1980 Frederick Klaits Domesticating a Religious Import: The Jesuits and the Inculturation of the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe, 1879–1980. By Nicholas M. Creary. (New York: Fordham University Press. 2011. Pp. xviii, 339. $45.00. ISBN 978-0-823-23334-2.) Nicholas Creary’s book on the Jesuit mission during Zimbabwe’s colonial period addresses an ecclesiastical audience as much as an audience of historians. An Africanist historian with a background of two years as a Jesuit novice, Creary writes with a strong belief in the potential of the Church to become inculturated—that is, adapted to the particularities of local cultures. The term inculturation was popularized by Pedro Arrupe, the superior general of the Jesuit Order from 1965 to 1983. Drawing upon Arrupe’s language, Creary writes with the conviction that “catholicity . . . allows for local cultures to influence the church universal by taking elements of broader Christian culture and incorporating them into their respective cultural contexts, while simultaneously offering their respective symbols to enrich the Christian context” (pp. 248–49). While documenting the popularity of Catholicism among the VaShona people of Zimbabwe, Creary writes with disappointment about the attitudes of Jesuit leaders, who tended to be suspicious of grassroots religious innovations. Such innovations included the incorporation of marriage payments into church practices; the adaptation of ancestral veneration into Catholic ritual; and the use of Mwari, a deity with shrines throughout the region, as a legitimate name for God within Catholic liturgy. For Jesuits, problems of inculturation were crucially shaped by canon lawmaking. The book concentrates on debates among the Jesuit leadership of Chishawasha Mission, the oldest Catholic mission in Zimbabwe, about the legitimacy of religious innovations under terms of canon law. In addition, Creary incorporates perspectives of [End Page 618] members of the lay Catholic Association as well as of Mariannhill missionaries who established convents for women during the 1920s, a time when the colonial government was making efforts to uphold local patriarchal authority. Creary’s intent to study “the efforts of African Christians to shed the European influences of an imported Christianity and transform it into an African religious experience” (p. 17) is carried out most effectively in a chapter concerning controversies over kurova guva, rites of honoring ancestors. These rites were banned for Catholic adherents in the 1890s by Jesuit missionaries, whose collective memory had been shaped by controversies during the eighteenth century between Jesuits and Dominicans over comparable Chinese rituals. Creary documents ongoing debates among Zimbabwean Catholics over the value and significance of ancestral veneration. In the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, African Catholic priests argued that kurova guva fulfills the commandment to honor one’s father and mother, and received permission from Rome to incorporate the rite into liturgy under the term kuchenura munhu (to purify the person). Yet in 2007, the Southern African Catholics Bishops’ Conference issued statements opposing the rite on grounds that it is performed out of fear of ancestral curses. Creary disputes this latter position, arguing that it overlooks commonalities between kuchenura munhu and prayers to saints, and represents a step backward from inculturation. Local ambivalence about ancestral demands is clearly a significant component of popular Catholicism in Zimbabwe; yet the implications of this issue are obscured by the text’s emphasis on the degree to which the Church has been inculturated. Owing to the atmosphere of fear associated with political violence in Zimbabwe since 2000, Creary was unable to conduct oral interviews that might have enriched descriptions of popular religious practices such as pilgrimages to the shrine of Bernard Mizeki, an Anglican martyr revered by Zimbabwean Christians of many denominations. In addition, the focus on inculturation glosses over Catholic responses to colonial and postcolonial violence. What this book has to offer instead is a detailed account of how the Jesuits’ own commitments to defining church law shaped their assessments of the cultural practices of their parishioners. Frederick Klaits Northern Kentucky University Copyright © 2012 The Catholic University of America Press

The Violent South: Culture of Honor, Social Disorganization, and Murder in Appalachia

Nisbett and Cohen contended that consistently higher argument-related homicide rates in the South are a result of early historical and economic circumstances of the frontier that contributed to the development of a persistent ‘‘culture of honor,’’ which legitimized violence in response to provocations. Using 1990—1992 argument-related homicide data for Appalachian counties and considering the effect of the religious culture, this study attempts to reexamine Cohen’s finding that social stability increased honor/argument-related homicide rates in the American South but had the opposite effect in the North. Although results show that interregional differences in homicide rate exist in Appalachia and could be explained by an existing ‘‘culture of honor’’ reinforced by certain religious beliefs, this analysis did not find support for Cohen’s hypotheses. Family stability appears to be a crime deterrent in both subregions, though the relationship is not significant. Community stability is positively related to homicide rates in both subregions, but the effect is significant in the North and not in the South, as Cohen predicted. In addition, when controlling for relevant structural covariates, the authors found that counties where most adherents belonged to a conservative Protestant denomination had on average significantly higher argument-related homicide rates, whereas counties with most Roman Catholic adherents had significantly lower murder rates.

Faith at Work Scale (FWS): Justification, Development, and Validation of a Measure of Judaeo-Christian Religion in the Workplace

Workplace spirituality research has side- stepped religion by focusing on the function of belief rather than its substance. Although establishing a unified foundation for research, the functional approach cannot shed light on issues of workplace pluralism, individual or institutional faith-work integration, or the institutional roles of religion in economic activity. To remedy this, we revisit definitions of spirituality and argue for the place of a belief-based approach to workplace religion. Addi- tionally, we describe the construction of a 15-item measure of workplace religion informed by Judaism and Christianity - the Faith at Work Scale (FWS). A stratified random sample (n = 234) of managers and professionals assisted in refining the FWS which exhibits a single factor structure (Eigenvalue = 8.88; variance accounted for = 59.22%) that is internally consistent (Cronbach's a = 0.77) and demonstrates convergent validity with the Faith Maturity Scale (r = 0.81, p > 0.0001). The scale shows lower skew and kurtosis with Mainline and Catholic adherents than with Mormons and Evangelicals. Validation of the scale among Jewish and diverse Christian adherants would extend research in workplace religion.

Religious Affiliation and Alcohol Consumption in the United States

Levels of alcohol consumption are a major public health issue. This study aims to gain a better understanding of how geographical patterns of religious affiliation in the United States relate to geographical patterns of alcohol consumption. We explored state‐level correlations between alcohol consumption and religious adherence. Although we found no statistically significant correlation between overall religious adherence rates and current or binge drinking rates, states with higher adherence rates were significantly more likely to have high proportions of binge drinking among current drinkers. Yet, regionally, we found a strong inverse correlation in the Southeast and a strong positive correlation in the Midwest and Northeast between adherence rates and current and binge drinking rates. These geographical differences were largely explained after stratifying by major religious denominational groupings. States with high Catholic adherence rates tended to have higher drinking rates, whereas states with high Evangelical Protestant adherence rates tended to have lower drinking rates. These findings suggest that the relationship between religion and alcohol may be denomination‐specific and challenge the lay perception that religious adherence per se is associated with less alcohol consumption and less excessive drinking among those who drink.

Anthony Munday and the Catholics, 1560-1633

Anthony Munday and the Catholics, 1560-1633, by Donna B. Hamilton. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. Pp. xxxvi + 268. Cloth $94.95. Reviewer: JOHN D. COX In a work careful historical reconstruction, Donna Hamilton has written what will surely be the definitive literary biography Anthony Munday for a long time to come. Munday is principally known as a minor dramatist, writing for the late Elizabethan popular stage from 1590 to 1602. This brief theatrical career brought him tangentially into the orbit Shakespeare, whose sunlike luster likely made Munday's small planet visible to literary historians in the first place. Both are thought to have contributed to the play called Sir Thomas More (unpublished until the nineteenth century), and Munday had a hand in Sir John Oldcastle, which was written in response to Shakespeare's 1 Henry TV. But Munday's writing includes far more than plays. As Hamilton shows, he had an extraordinarily long and prolific literary career in many genres, stretching from 1577 (when he was only seventeen) to 1633, the year his death. What is most striking about Hamilton's biography is her argument for Munday's adherence to Catholicism. At a time when the argument for Shakespeare's Catholic adherence is enjoying unprecedented popularity, the careful study a possible parallel is illuminating and helpful, especially since Munday's Catholicism is not obvious. He published a condemnation the recusant priest Edmund Campion, when Campion was captured and executed in 1581 ; Munday dedicated a book to Richard Topcliffe, chief torturer for Elizabeth and James and eager persecutor recusants; Munday published two sermons by John Calvin; and at least once in his long career Munday took service with the crown as a pursuivant or warrant officer, charged to find, inform on, and assist in the apprehension traitors, especially recusants. Munday's hand in Sir John Oldcastle adds to the puzzle, because the play resuscitates the reputation a Lollard (or proto-Protestant) martyr whom Shakespeare lampooned in the character subsequently known as Falstaff. Well aware these difficulties, Hamilton nonetheless makes her case persuasively by means various kinds historical evidence together with informed close reading Munday's daunting corpus. She argues that Munday is what Elizabethans called a church papist, that is, one who adhered to the government's standards for religious conformity while continuing to believe in Catholic doctrine. This was not an easy stance to maintain. Elizabeth was not only queen the realm but also head the English Church, which was independent the Church Rome and therefore opposed to papal domination. Depending on the strenuousness one's belief in Catholic doctrine, conforming to the standards the English Church was heretical, as recusants maintained, because it necessarily entailed denial the pope's authority. Munday was clearly not a recusant, or he would not have survived. In what, then, did his Catholicism consist? Hamilton argues convincingly that even though Munday remained loyal to the crown, he consistently advocated tolerance Catholics, rather than persecution, and he signaled his Catholic allegiance in a variety ways. His patronage network was consistently Catholic, for example, as Hamilton shows in detail. He published with printers who were known Catholic sympathizers. He addressed issues that concerned Catholics in particular, and he addressed them in ways that suggest Catholic sympathy. Finally, and here Hamilton's interpretation is boldest and most arresting, Munday frequently spoke through the experience and voices others in ways that suggest his own position as revealed outside the texts he published. Reading Munday's writing in light a densely elucidated context is thus essential to Hamilton's strategy and makes it credible. Regarding Munday's Brief discourse on the takinge Edmund Campion, the seditious Jesuit (1581), for example, Hamilton notes that the tract coneludes with a list of the priests, gentlemen and yeomen now in the Tower, as well as those the wives and nuns who remained at Lyford, where Campion had been captured (37). …

The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews, and Protestants: Minorities and the Nation State in Nineteenth-Century Europe (review)

The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews, and Protestants: Minorities and the Nation State in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Edited by Rainer Liedtke and Stephan Wendehorst. (New York: Manchester University Press. Distributed in the U.S.A. by St. Martin's Press. 1999. Pp. x, 223. $79.95.) The historiography of European religious minorities traditionally focuses upon the idea of emancipation. Concerned primarily with advancing the civil and legal rights of religious minorities, emancipation became the subject of intense debate in several major European countries during the nineteenth century. In their volume entitled The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews, and Protestants: Minorities and the Nation State in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Rainer Liedtke and Stephan Wendehorst offer a series of interesting essays by a group of international scholars who examine emancipation within the context of nineteenth-century nation building. The result is a fine collection of historical studies delineating the process through which Catholics, Jews, and Protestant minorities in nineteenth-century Great Britain, France, Italy, and Germany achieved equal legal standing with members of the majority religious group. Using a comparative historical approach, the essays in this volume offer detailed and critical narratives of how Catholics, Jews, and Protestants gradually became assimilated into the social and political mainstream of nineteenthcentury European life. What emerges is an understanding of the emancipation process within the conceptual framework of European nation building. Thus, each essay seeks to demonstrate that legal and political rights for religious minorities were linked closely to the formation of more modern and secular nation states. Nevertheless, conditions for Catholics,Jews, and Protestants differed widely throughout Europe, influencing the pace of legal and political recognition for each group. For example, in his treatment of French Protestants (pp. 56-82), Andre Encreve notes that Catholic hostility toward the Huguenots was so intense that even by the end of the nineteenth century French Protestants remained a highly suspect community. Similarly, Wolfgang Altgeld's essay on German Catholics (pp. 100-121) documents carefully the political and social oppression Catholics faced within a deeply national Protestant culture. Altgeld, however, attributes Catholic failure to gain formal emancipation, not so much to Protestant political and religious antipathy, as to Catholic adherence to the old rural social and economic order. By the 1870's, Germany was transformed into a major industrialized state. Therefore, the failure of many German Catholics to progress economically and socially in a modern industrial society hindered emancipation significantly. But even after Bismarck's Kulturkampf, more progressive and liberal middle-class Catholics favored integration into the wider national community. Even so, emancipation proved a formidable struggle. Like the experiences of French Protestants and German Catholics, other essays in this volume document conditions specific to particular religious minorities. Thus, as Ian Machin explains in his discussion of British Catholics (pp. 11-32), Catholic Emancipation was a direct result of Irish pressure (p. 14), although discrimination against English Catholics socially and professionally continued well into the twentieth century (p. …

Deconstructing Whiteness: Irish Women in Britain

The Irish are largely invisible as an ethnic group in Britain but continue to be racialized as inferior and alien Others. Invisibility has been reinforced by academic treatment Most historians have assumed that a framework of assimilation is appropriate and this outcome is uncritically accepted as desirable. Sociologists on the other hand have excluded the Irish from consideration, providing tacit support for the ‘myth of homogeneity’ of white people in Britain against the supposedly new phenomenon of threatening (Black) ‘immigrants’.Focus on the paradigm of ‘colour’ has limited the range of racist ideologies examined and led to denial of anti-Irish racism. But an analysis of nineteenth-century attitudes shows that the ‘Irish Catholic’ was a significant Other in the construction of the British nationalist myth. Despite contemporary forgetting, hostility towards the Irish continues, over and above immediate reactions to recent IRA campaigns. Verbal abuse and racial harassment are documented in London and elsewhere, but unacknowledged.The masculine imagery of ‘Paddy’ hides the existence of Irish women in Britain, although they have outnumbered men since the 1920s. In America, by contrast, there is a strong stereotype of ‘Bridget’ and her central contribution to Irish upward mobility is recognized. But invisibility does not protect Irish women in Britain from racism. Indeed, they are often more exposed since their productive and reproductive roles connect more firmly to British society. Moreover, women have played a key role in maintaining Catholic adherence, which continues to resonate closely with Irishness and difference.