The Imperial Church

Moran takes up a task under which other historians of American Catholicism have long labored: turning American historical memory away from East Coast Colonial hegemony and, instead, calling attention to other parts of North America that came to have a formative influence on the American national psyche before and during the American Revolution. She argues that "many American Protestants and Catholics turned to idealized visions of Catholic imperial pasts in order to talk about the past and future of U.S. empire" (p. 20). Succeeding brilliantly in illustrating this sorely needed contribution to the field, Moran's landmark text is a must read for scholarly audiences.

~Choice

Katherine Moran has written a landmark book that opens a new era in the historiography of American religion and empir. To a field that long has been eager for new frames and methods of integrating Catholicism into American history—in such a way as to show Catholics as a constituent component of that history, rather than a community of individuals simply living within a Protestant civil society—The Imerial Church is a gift.

~US Catholic Historian

Katherine Moran moves beyond examining United States Catholicism through the lens of what has been called the 'immigrant church,' as well the anti-Catholicism connected with this history, by focusing instead on what she calls the 'Imperial Church,' which is also an essential part of the American Catholic story. The Imperial Church should be read by all those engaged in the study of US Catholicism, even if their own scholarly interests have focused on the immigrant church.

~Review for Religious

Moran has posed and answered an important historical question. In doing so, she not only demonstrates the plasticity of ideas about Catholicism in a truly revelatory fashion, but she also shows how empire drove religious changes in the American Midwest and elsewhere. This book will surprise readers and it will pique questions that strike at the core of our interpretations of the modern United States and American Catholic history.

~The Annals of Iowa

As Katharine Moran reveals in her insightful and captivating new book, American Protestants not only thought about Catholics, they also thought with Catholicism as they sought to extend America's own power and influence across the continent and throughout the globe.

~Church History

Beyond national Catholic narratives, The Imperial Church expands American Catholic history alongside American empire to the Philippines in the aftermath of the Spanish-Cuban-American War. Moran challenges historians to rethink how American empire and religion are assumed to interact in this era.

~American Catholic Studies

The Imperial Church challenges the notion of the 'Immigrant Church' because, as Moran explains, Catholicism was central to the American concept of empire at that time. By positing the centrality of Catholicism in US imperial rhetoric, Moran shows that Americans did not completely disavow their imperial predecessors (i.e., the Spanish) but rather saw themselves as sharing similar racial and civilizational projects diametrically opposite to the savagery of their imperial subjects (i.e., the Filipinos).

~Philippine Studies