Religion in American Politics: A Short History

The appendix of sixty page-length biographical essays represents a useful primer. Readers will find entries on Jacques Marquette, John Carroll, Mathew Carey, Dorothy Day, and Joseph Bernardin. But they will also find information on figures like Catherine Tekakwitha, the Mohawk convert to Catholicism; Mary Elizabeth Lange, the Haitian-born founder of the Oblate Sisters of Providence; James Walsh, who founded the Maryknoll Fathers; and Gustave Weigel, the Jesuit who commenced the practice of formal ecumenical dialogue with American Protestants.Taken together, these essays alone provide a nice introduction to more than 500 years of history. Above all, the global connections of these figures underscore the way in which American Catholicism was never simply an American phenomenon, but always an international one.