Crosses, candles, choir vestments, sanctuary flowers, and stained glass are common church features found in nearly all mainline denominations of American Christianity today. Most Protestant churchgoers would be surprised to learn, however, that at one time these elements were viewed with suspicion as foreign implements associated strictly with the Roman Catholic Church. Blending history with the study of material culture, Ryan K. Smith sheds light on the ironic convergence of anti-Catholicism and the Gothic Revival movement in nineteenth-century America. Smith finds the source for both movements in the sudden rise of Roman Catholicism after 1820, when it began to grow from a tiny minority into the country's largest single religious body. Its growth triggered a corresponding rise in anti-Catholic activities, as activists representing every major Protestant denomination attacked "popery" through the pulpit, the press, and politics. At the same time, Catholic worship increasingly attracted young, genteel observers around the country. Its art and its tangible access to the sacred meshed well with the era's romanticism and market-based materialism. Smith argues that these tensions led Protestant churches to break with tradition and adopt recognizably Latin art. He shows how architectural and artistic features became tools through which Protestants adapted to America's new commercialization while simultaneously defusing the potent Catholic "threat." The results presented a colorful new religious landscape, but they also illustrated the durability of traditional religious boundaries.

"For more than thirty years, the quarterly journal U.S. Catholic historian has mapped the diverse terrain of American Catholicism. This collection of essays, including seven of the most popular and path-breaking contributions of recent years, tells the story of Catholics previously underappreciated by historians: women, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and those on the frontier and borderlands."--Publisher description.

"Based on extensive primary archival materials, Faith and Action is a comprehensive history of the Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati over the past 175 years. Fortin paints a picture of the Catholic Church's involvement in the city's development and contextualizes the changing values and programs of the Church in the region. He characterizes the institution's history as one of both faith and action. From the time of its founding to the present, the way Catholics in the archdiocese of Cincinnati have viewed their relationship with the rest of society has changed with each major change in society. In the beginning, while espousing separation of church and state and religious liberty, they wanted the Church to adapt to the new American situation. In the mid-nineteenth century Cincinnati Catholics dealt with a dominant Protestant culture and, at times, a hostile environment, whereas a century later it had become much more a part of the American mainstream. Throughout most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries most Catholics saw themselves as outsiders. During the past fifty years, however, Cincinnati Catholics, like most of their counterparts in the United States, have felt more confident and viewed themselves as very much a part of American society"--Publisher's description