Notre Dame Historian’s New Book Calls Rockville Centre Bellwether For Suburban Catholicism

ROCKVILLE CENTRE, NY. — When University of Notre Dame Professor Fr. Stephen Koeth set out to study Catholicism in America post-World War II, he wanted to examine the way faith changed when people moved from cities to suburbs. When he sought out a case study for that change, the author and historian said the Diocese of Rockville Centre, which he called the “first entirely suburban diocese” in the country, came as a natural choice.

In his book, “Crabgrass Catholicism: How Suburbanization Transformed Faith and Politics in Postwar America,” Koeth studies the migration of Catholic Americans from large urban centers to suburbia and the impact it had on their lives and the way they practiced their faith. The book spans from the 1940s to the 1980s, a time that saw massive development on Long Island and the establishment of a new base for the church there.

Prior to the establishment of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Koeth said Kings, Nassau, Queens and Suffolk counties were all under the purview of the bishop of Brooklyn. Churches in Nassau and Suffolk, Koeth said, were often a place where the church sent ineffective or malcontent priests. That changed in 1957.

“When it was established as a diocese by the Vatican in 1957, Catholic commentators in Catholic magazines and newspapers all over the country took note of this, and they said, ‘look, the diocese of Rockville Center is the first entirely suburban diocese,’” Koeth said. “It's a sign that the Vatican recognizes this is the future of the Church in the United States. It's going to be suburban...And so, 'let's all pay attention,' they said, ‘to how the diocese of Rockville Centre is going to develop, because it's going to give us an insight into how the church outside of Chicago, outside of Detroit, St. Louis, etc., is going to develop.’”

In his research, Koeth said one of the first changes that came to Catholic life as it suburbanized was spatial. Populations exploded in Nassau County during the mid-20th century, and small rural churches were ill-equipped to handle that boom. In some parts of Long Island, Koeth said chapels that held 200 people were confronted with 2,000-unit developments.

“We need temporary places to house all of these people for Sunday mass," Koeth said. "They don't fit in the chapel that holds 200. So we use movie theaters and firehouses and drive-in movie theaters and all sorts of weird spots.”

Koeth said the move from the church space to a more decentralized parish also changed the relationship between clergy and parishioners, with non-frocked members of the congregation taking on roles as catechists and fundraisers. As suburbs continued to flourish, Koeth said the decentralization of parish life also brought parishioners to spend more time in secular spaces, making it harder for faith to pass down from generation to generation. As the faith became harder to pass on, Koeth said, the suburban Catholicism he researched in the mid-20th century became a “canary in a coalmine” for how churches would change into the 1980s.

“By the end of the book, I talk about how suburbanization in the 1940s and '50s, in a certain sense, set a trend that we now deal with, that we refer to as religious disaffiliation,” Koeth said. “Young people today who say, ‘I have no faith. I have no participation in any church at all. I'm nondenominational,’ That’s all the more prevalent now, but it began in the generation that was coming of age in the late 60s and 70s, which was that first generation that was coming of age in the suburbs.”

What Koeth found as he compared his research to the modern church, however, is that Rockville Centre and its diocese became a model that the rest of the country — and its churches — have followed.

“The phenomenon has long since become a nationwide phenomenon, and part of my argument is that the Catholic Church in the United States today is, in fact, a suburban church,” Koeth said.

As for what the future of the church looks like with suburbs at its center, Koeth said religious groups, Catholic or otherwise, have an opportunity to help people find meaning in an increasingly digital, sometimes lonely world.

“Amidst an era of social media, people are feeling more and more isolated, more and more lonely. Religious groups should have an answer to that. Religious groups have a tradition that says, ‘We know how to bring people together in person, not just virtually.’ And so I think that that is an opportunity for religious groups in suburbs, and not just the Catholic Church,” Koeth said. “When churches are at their best, they do these two things: They provide community, and they provide meaning. And I do think we probably need that more than ever.”

Koeth’s book is available for purchase through the University of Chicago Press and Amazon.