Recent decades have witnessed an increased attention to the importance of religion in the development of print culture in America, as evidenced in the work of figures such as Paul Gutjahr, Candy Gunther Brown, and David Paul Nord.Footnote ¹ Much of this work is focussed on the nineteenth century, and on topics and institutions that can be described broadly as evangelical in religious orientation. The two works under consideration here move our understanding forward in three ways: chronologically (the early to mid-twentieth century), institutionally (liberal Protestantism and Catholicism), and conceptually (attention to the impact of modern science, secularism, and pluralism). Considered together, they demonstrate the significant role that print culture played in giving voice to the anxieties of religious actors at the centre and on the periphery of modern American life, and in shaping the substance of their respective religious identities.

Liberal Protestantism came to dominate the religious outlook of elite centres of American cultural power with astonishing rapidity in the early twentieth century. But this dominance was always a contested one, and, in the end, not long-lived. Perhaps surprisingly, some of the most corrosive influences on that dominance were to be found at the core of liberal Protestantism itself. In its attempts to integrate modernity into its religious self-understanding, it introduced profound uncertainties for its members as to the nature of the Christian religion, and as to its relevance to modern life. Hedstrom argues, among other things, that this apparent failure to maintain its institutional and ideological hegemony over American religious life might be more properly understood as a kind of pyrrhic success. Liberal Protestantism succeeded in disseminating its core commitments – to religious pluralism and tolerance over sectarianism, to religion understood within the bounds of modern science, and to a therapeutic spirituality in place of creedal confession – into the generic religiosity of secular American society. The success of this cultural agenda made its own institutional presence in that society no longer compelling, or necessary.

The prospects that mass print culture offered religionists in the early twentieth century were seductive: it held out the promise of increased religious literacy (and presumably devotion), while at the same time threatening to transform what was essentially a moral pursuit into something which could be commercialized and commodified; that is, into a pursuit rooted in economic desire. Recognizing that the power and presence of popular print culture would inexorably shape society, particularly middlebrow culture, liberal Protestantism embraced the opportunity that print offered to shape the intellectual habits of its members, and those of the broader secular public. The overlapping associations in American culture between the leaders of liberal religious denominations and media conglomerates made it possible to coordinate efforts to increase religious literacy. Events such as the Religious Book Week of the 1920s and institutions such as the Religious Book Club (begun in 1927) were the result of this collaboration, mirroring efforts to increase general American literacy (such as the Book of the Month Club).

Liberal Protestantism used its cultural hegemony to further its theological agenda, seeking to put into the hands of its readers the “best” sort of Christian reading: books that took the intellectual claims of modernity seriously, and shaped the presentation of Christian faith accordingly. For the leaders of this effort, this meant offering readers books of decidedly psychological and mystic orientations. As a part of its appropriation of modern rationalism, Protestant liberalism undertook to transform its understanding of the divine–human encounter in more immanental terms; that is, to conceptualize the “supernatural” by way of more naturalistic explanations. As a part of this process, it also shifted its belief structure from the classical emphasis on doctrine to an emphasis on experience. Literary efforts to explain the spiritual life in terms of human psychology, even its ineffable components (mysticism), fit this paradigm neatly, and came into vogue. William James's Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) staked out the philosophical grounds for religious psychologism. Authors who could effectively popularize Christian faith in this way were perennial best sellers for large publishing houses, from the mysticism of the Quaker activist Rufus Jones, to the ethical liberalism of Harry Emerson Fosdick, to the therapeutic theology of Norman Vincent Peale.

The third pillar of liberal Protestant theology, religious pluralism, was also evident in its literacy campaign. From the earliest years, works from non-Christian traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, or at least works that contemplated the potentially constructive relationship between Christian and non-Christian spirituality, were included in the reading lists and the publication efforts of Protestant institutions. This interest in pluralism reached its pinnacle in the postwar period. Theological efforts to come to terms with the atrocities of World War II, as well as the looming spectre of (atheistic) Communism, along with the rising cultural status of American Catholicism and Judaism, produced an entirely new subgenre in the Protestant publication market, devoted to the exploration of the newly minted “Judeo-Christian” civilization. Catholic authors such as Thomas Merton and Jewish authors such as Joshua Liebman found new audiences for their works, works which shared with their newfound Protestant coreligionists an emphasis on the experiential essence of modern spirituality.

Hedstrom's work duly notes the parallel effort at religious literacy at work in twentieth-century American Catholicism, particularly its crossover effect on Protestantism. Una Cadegan's work considers this phenomenon in full. The title of Cadegan's monograph is most aptly chosen, for it perfectly captures the dual concerns of American Catholics regarding popular print culture. On the one hand, the Church sought to control literary production as a defensive measure. It sought to provide its members with “safe” books, books that, having the imprimatur of the Church, would reassuringly guide followers toward a conserving appropriation of faith and modern life. All good books are Catholic books. On the other hand, the Catholic foray into print also reflected a supreme confidence in the constructive contribution to life found in Church teaching, an abiding conviction that Catholic books were underwritten by a theology that had something to offer, not only to Catholics, but also to the betterment of American society as a whole. All good books are Catholic books.

American Catholicism's encounter with modernity was a decidedly different affair to that of liberal Protestantism. Modernism was in many ways the creation or stepchild of liberal Protestantism; thus a natural affinity existed between the two. This relationship was certainly perceived by the Church hierarchy, which consequently identified modernity as an incipiently anti-Catholic invention. American Catholics not only had to take this mindset into consideration; they also had to navigate the delicate balance between cultural assimilation and the integrity of their religious self-identity. If to be a Catholic was to resist modernity, but to be an artist was to engage it, if not embrace it, where did the line between the two fall for the Catholic artist?

Cadegan identifies three important ways in which Catholic literary culture diverged from the American mainstream. Where American aesthetic ideals came to exalt the individualistic element of the artistic process (the artist's autonomous control over the finished work), Catholicism emphasized the communal nature of art: good literature was the result of an ongoing, if implied, dialogue between artists and their reading public, the community of faith. Where American sensibilities valued art as an end in itself, without any utilitarian purpose, Catholic ideals were activist. Good literature should serve the highest moral aspirations of its recipients; it should contribute to a better society. Finally, where the American understanding was moving in the direction of art as an expression of transient personal experience or insight, Catholic understanding held up the possibility of art as an expression of timeless (religious) truths.

To mediate this engagement, the Church used its well-established organs of censorship. The works of Catholic authors had to pass through a series of institutional filters, culminating in the prospect of being assigned to the Index. Catholic authors faced the added hurdle of operating in an explicitly antimodernist theological ecosystem (post-Vatican I), in which papal encyclicals left narrow spaces for the creative appropriation of modern intellectual and aesthetic developments. As Cadegan narrates it, interwar Catholic literary history revolves around this dynamic of censorship and the creative freedom of authors. Perhaps most surprising, then, given this dynamic, is the extent to which American Catholic literature served as a forum for a substantive engagement with modernity. This engagement has only come to be more fully appreciated in retrospect, not only by Catholics themselves but also by the broader American literary community. As Catholicism came of age in the 1950s, eager to participate in the American mainstream, and as the Church hierarchy officially rescinded its opposition to modernity, the deeply, if covertly, modern characteristic of early twentieth-century Catholic literature has come to be discovered.

Taken together, these two works move the study of religious publishing in America beyond the mere mechanics and economics of the industry, toward a more considered understanding of the cultural and ideological dynamics at work in interchange between religion and print.