Crabgrass Catholicism: How Suburbanization Transformed Faith and Politics in Postwar America -- Stephen M. Koeth, Paperback

How suburbanization was a crucial catalyst for reforms in the Catholic Church.

The 1960s in America were a time of revolt against the stifling conformism embodied in the sprawling, uniform suburbs of the 1950s. Typically, the reforms of the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council, which aimed to make the Church more modern and accessible, are seen as one result of that broader cultural liberalization. Yet in Crabgrass Catholicism, Stephen M. Koeth demonstrates that the liberalization of the Church was instead the product of the mass suburbanization that began some fifteen years earlier. Koeth argues that postwar suburbanization revolutionized the Catholic parish, the relationship between clergy and laity, conceptions of parochial education, and Catholic participation in US politics, and thereby was a significant factor in the religious disaffiliation that only accelerated in subsequent decades.

A novel exploration of the role of Catholics in postwar suburbanization, Crabgrass Catholicism will be of particular interest to urban historians, scholars of American Catholicism and religious studies, and Catholic clergy and laity.


Author: Stephen M. Koeth
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 08/19/2025
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
ISBN: 9780226842202

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 05/12/2025

About the Author
Stephen M. Koeth is assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and an ordained Catholic priest.