A01=Susan Juster
Author_Susan Juster
Category=NHK
Category=QRAX
Category=QRMB1
colonial Maryland
English Atlantic
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eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Irish and African Catholics in the English Caribbean
Jesuit missionaries in the English Atlantic
Post-Reformation Catholicism
religion in colonial North America
sacramental politics
the ritual lives of enslaved African and Indigenous Catholics
women and Anglo-American Catholicism
women in colonial religion
Product details
- ISBN 9781469686226
- Dimensions: 155 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 03 Jun 2025
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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From Nevis to Newfoundland, Catholics were everywhere in English America. But often feared and distrusted, they hid in plain sight, deftly obscuring themselves from the Protestant authorities. Their strategies of concealment, deception, and misdirection frustrated colonial census takers, and their presence has likewise eluded historians of religion, who have portrayed Catholics as isolated dots in an otherwise vast Protestant expanse.
Pushing against this long-standing narrative, Susan Juster provides the first comprehensive look at the lived experience of Catholics—whether Irish, African, French, or English—in colonial America. She reveals a vibrant community that, although often forced to conceal itself, maintained a rich sacramental life saturated with traditional devotional objects and structured by familiar rituals. As Juster shows, the unique pressures of colonial existence forced Catholics to adapt and transform these religious practices. By following the faithful into their homes and private chapels as they married, christened infants, buried loved ones, and prayed for their souls, Juster uncovers a confluence of European, African, and Indigenous spiritual traditions produced by American colonialism.
Pushing against this long-standing narrative, Susan Juster provides the first comprehensive look at the lived experience of Catholics—whether Irish, African, French, or English—in colonial America. She reveals a vibrant community that, although often forced to conceal itself, maintained a rich sacramental life saturated with traditional devotional objects and structured by familiar rituals. As Juster shows, the unique pressures of colonial existence forced Catholics to adapt and transform these religious practices. By following the faithful into their homes and private chapels as they married, christened infants, buried loved ones, and prayed for their souls, Juster uncovers a confluence of European, African, and Indigenous spiritual traditions produced by American colonialism.
Susan Juster is W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research at the Huntington Library.
