Introduction
- Introduction
Introduction
This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of John T. McGreevy's Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North (University of Chicago Press, 1996). Still in print, the book remains one of the best-known works in American Catholic history. Cited extensively by scholars beyond Catholic studies, it has had significant influence on our understanding of the history of U.S. race relations and urban community life. It made making a convincing case for why an understanding of Catholic faith and culture matters, challenging those who might not otherwise have paid much attention to Catholics and their parochial affairs to take a closer look.
To mark this anniversary, American Catholic Studies invited five accomplished scholars to reflect on McGreevy's work in light of their own research and specializations. They were asked to consider how the work reads now, twenty-five years later. What are its enduring contributions or potential limitations? How has it shaped our understanding of American Catholicism and what research is still needed? At a time of renewed racial reckoning within the church and society, does it continue to speak to us today?
Participating in this forum are Dr. Matthew J. Cressler of the College of Charleston, a religious studies scholar interested in the intersection of religion and race; Dr. Thomas Sugrue of New York University, an expert on urban history and the civil rights movement; Dr. Deborah Kanter of Albion College, who has recently written about [End Page 1] the history of Mexican American Catholics in Chicago; Dr. Stephen Koeth, CSC, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Notre Dame, whose research examines the Catholic shift to the suburbs in the post-World War II period; and Dr. Craig Ford of St. Norbert College, a moral theologian with interests in critical race theory and racial justice. Their essays are followed by a response from John McGreevy, professor of history at the University of Notre Dame.
We are grateful to these scholars for agreeing to be part of this forum, which had initially been planned as a roundtable for the American Catholic Historical Association's annual meeting this past January. But as with so many other events of the past year and a half, the gathering was cancelled on account of the Covid-19 pandemic. We are pleased that they accepted our invitation to adapt their planned remarks for publication here. [End Page 2]
