Southern Crucifix, Southern Cross: Catholic-Protestant Relations in the Old South by Andrew H. M. Stern (review)

One of the most overlooked religious groups in the southern United States also happens to be part of the largest and long-held faith traditions in the world. Catholicism has made a significant impact on the South but has just recently found its way into the literature; over the past several years authors like Emily Clark, Kevin M. Schulz, Amy Koehlinger, and Tracy Neal Leavelle have all contributed important scholarship on the subject. Prior to their work, however, the mostly evangelical Protestant narrative has overshadowed Catholicism’s influence in the region, with Catholics appearing as objects of disdain or subjects of persecution if they are visible at all. In Southern Crucifix, Southern Cross: Catholic-Protestant Relations in the Old South, Andrew H. M. Stern offers another compelling study on the importance of Catholicism in the South and bridges the divide between evangelical Protestant and Catholic history. Stern counters the culturally accepted notion that Protestants and Catholics always had an acrimonious relationship and, instead, offers an alternative story of cooperation and collaboration between the two faiths during the antebellum period.

Stern focuses on the relationships between Catholics and Protestants that developed in the urban areas of Charleston, Louisville, and Mobile. His argument for this selective portrait is that Catholics mostly remained in urban centers and that these cities collectively provide a diverse sampling of southern culture. Other scholars have not studied the Catholic population in these cities in much detail, and in providing the reader a glimpse of religious life there Stern certainly fills a gap in the literature (5–6). The chapters are structured around important aspects of religious life and service that necessitated Protestant-Catholic cooperation: social networking, health care, education, worship, and politicking. In each of these chapters, Stern contends that the two Christian sects cooperated in significant ways to better serve the local population. Catholics and Protestants crafted personal relationships via social interactions and Catholics proved to be just as “southern” as their evangelical counterparts. Stern concludes that both groups supported southern institutions, including slavery, and, “Southerners welcomed Catholics as fellow citizens and Catholics demonstrated that southern faith in them was well placed” (178).

This study finds its strength in its emphasis on relationships. Stern does not focus on theological barriers that had to be overcome or doctrinal issues that spurred disunion. Instead, he has written a book about relationships and the centrality of community in the South, which sutures the many chapters together and undergirds the discussion with a foundation in social history. The community that Stern so ably describes, however, supported the peculiar institution that drove the region to secession and the Civil War. The collaboration of Protestants and Catholics in supporting slavery might have deserved its own chapter—that single point is so vital to understanding the connections between the two groups. Another aspect that might have received more attention is how social class contributed to the connections between Catholics and Protestants. Throughout the book, Stern presents compelling anecdotes of individuals working together despite religious allegiances. However, the reader wonders if in the world of the antebellum South, those relationships were built in the interest of class hegemony (especially in urban areas) in spite of religious leanings. An enhanced discussion of race and class, in other words, would have only enhanced an already dynamic thesis that Stern has supported with archival sources, periodicals, published memoirs, and church papers.

Southern Crucifix, Southern Cross would be of interest to all scholars of religious history and southern culture, but is also accessible for a wider audience of individuals interested in southern religion. Stern has produced a useful work that contributes in meaningful ways to the growing literature on Catholicism in the southern states.