Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Smith, Ryan K

Title Gothic arches, Latin crosses : anti-Catholicism and American church designs in the nineteenth century / Ryan K. Smith
Published Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, ©2006

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xii, 224 pages) : illustrations
Contents Catholic churches -- The cross -- The gothic -- The flowers
Summary 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 features were viewed as suspicious, 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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-213) and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
English
Print version record
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Subject Katholische Kirche
Anti-Catholicism -- United States -- History -- 19th century
Church buildings -- United States -- Design and construction
Church architecture -- United States
Architecture, Gothic -- United States
RELIGION -- Christianity -- General.
Anti-Catholicism
Architecture, Gothic
Church architecture
Church buildings -- Design and construction
Antikatholizismus
Ausstattung
Gegenbewegung Soziologie
Kirchenbau
Konservierung
Kunstwerk
Neugotik
Anticatholicisme -- États-Unis -- 19e siècle.
Architecture religieuse -- États-Unis -- 19e siècle.
Architecture gothique -- États-Unis.
United States -- Church history -- 19th century.
United States
USA
Genre/Form Electronic books
Church history
History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2005034947
ISBN 9780807830253
0807830259
9780807877289
080787728X
9781429453967
1429453966