Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2014

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Catholic Studies | Christianity | Liturgy and Worship | Religion

Abstract

In 1843 the Catholic bishop of Philadelphia, Francis Patrick Kenrick, wrote to the Public School Board of Controllers to ask that Catholic children be spared reading of the Protestant Bible [the King James Version, KJV] and that anti-Catholic vitriol be excised from textbooks of the public schools. Historians focus on the translation divide – the Protestant King James Version versus the Catholic Douai-Rheims – but the issue closer to the heart of the matter was ritual formation (and malformation) of Christian believers, well-heeled Protestants versus poor Catholics. What happened in summer 1844, I suggest, was more accurately Rite Riots rather than Bible Riots, as they are usually tagged; the toll was grave: at least fifteen dead, fifty injured.

Comments

DOI: 10.1080/0458063X.2014.922005

Special Issue: The Lectionary and Its Reading

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