Crabgrass Catholicism: U.S. Catholics and the Historiography of Postwar Suburbia

Abstract:Andrew Greeley's first book, The Church and the Suburbs, emerged from his observations as a newly-ordained associate pastor in a suburban parish of Chicago. Published in 1959, it was the first book-length exploration of post-war suburbanization's impact on the Church in the United States. In the sixty years since The Church and the Suburbs was published, U.S. Catholic historians have largely ignored how Catholics helped create postwar suburbia and how Catholicism was refashioned by the migration from urban ethnic neighborhoods to rapidly expanding suburbs. This essay briefly summarizes Greeley's conclusions, situates his contribution within the earliest responses to postwar suburbanization, and examines how the study of suburbs has evolved since The Church and the Suburbs was published. It also proposes several aspects of Catholic suburbia that might assist historians in better explicating Catholicism's place in twentieth-century American history.