Winner of the American Catholic Historical Association's
Christopher J. Kauffman Prize in U.S. Catholic History (2026)
Christopher J. Kauffman Prize in U.S. Catholic History (2026)
In Making Catholic America, William S. Cossen shows how Catholic men and women worked to prove themselves to be model American citizens in the decades between the Civil War and the Great Depression. Far from being outsiders in American history, Catholics took command of public life in the early twentieth century, claiming leadership in the growing American nation. They produced their own version of American history and claimed the power to remake the nation in their own image, arguing that they were the country's most faithful supporters of freedom and liberty and that their church had birthed American independence. Making Catholic America offers a new interpretation of American life in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, demonstrating the surprising success of an often-embattled religious group in securing for itself a place in the national community and in profoundly altering what it meant to be an American in the modern world.
CRITICAL PRAISE
"Making Catholic America skillfully reframes Gilded Age and Progressive Era Catholicism around the confident insistence of white Catholic citizenship. By locating this confidence amid US exceptionalism, imperialism, and boundary-drawing, Cossen invites all of us to take stock of Catholic Americanism and its consequences."
- Kathleen Holscher, University of New Mexico, author of Religious Lessons
"Superb. Coupling exceptionally deep archival research with wide reading in contemporary and historical accounts, Making Catholic America illuminates the complexities of Catholic interaction with American nationalism, Reconstruction, imperialism, and immigration."
- Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame, author of America's Book
"In showing how white American Catholics deftly leveraged virulent anti-Catholicism to claim the leading role in establishing Anglo-Saxon Americanism, William S. Cossen opens up important new perspectives on the trajectory of US social and political life since the twentieth century."
- Robert Orsi, Northwestern University, author of The Madonna of 115th Street
"William Cossen's succinct monograph corrects the long-standing idea that Catholic Americans identified as beleaguered minorities under the persistent persecution of a Protestant American state....He reminds historians of religion that two things can be true at once: a religious group may be the victim of systemic discrimination; also, a religious group may be the proprietor of the very system that they claim has discriminated against them."
- Journal of Church and State
"Making Catholic America skillfully reframes Gilded Age and Progressive Era Catholicism around the confident insistence of white Catholic citizenship. By locating this confidence amid US exceptionalism, imperialism, and boundary-drawing, Cossen invites all of us to take stock of Catholic Americanism and its consequences."
- Kathleen Holscher, University of New Mexico, author of Religious Lessons
"Superb. Coupling exceptionally deep archival research with wide reading in contemporary and historical accounts, Making Catholic America illuminates the complexities of Catholic interaction with American nationalism, Reconstruction, imperialism, and immigration."
- Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame, author of America's Book
"In showing how white American Catholics deftly leveraged virulent anti-Catholicism to claim the leading role in establishing Anglo-Saxon Americanism, William S. Cossen opens up important new perspectives on the trajectory of US social and political life since the twentieth century."
- Robert Orsi, Northwestern University, author of The Madonna of 115th Street
"William Cossen's succinct monograph corrects the long-standing idea that Catholic Americans identified as beleaguered minorities under the persistent persecution of a Protestant American state....He reminds historians of religion that two things can be true at once: a religious group may be the victim of systemic discrimination; also, a religious group may be the proprietor of the very system that they claim has discriminated against them."
- Journal of Church and State