The Jesuits in the United States: A Concise History

Summary

The history of America cannot be told without the history of religion, the history of American religion cannot be told without the history of Catholicism, and the history of Catholicism in America cannot be told without the history of Jesuits in America.

Jesuits in the United States offers a panoramic overview of the Jesuit order in the United States from the colonial era to the present. David J. Collins, SJ, describes the development of the Jesuit order in the US against the background of American religious, cultural, and social history. He covers the papacy's suppression of the order and its restoration period. The author also compares Jesuit activities in the US to those in Europe and, by the twentieth century, to those around the world, as the political and religious connections between the US and the world, especially Latin America, grow. Collins also reflects on the future of the order in light of its past.

Listeners familiar with the Jesuit tradition and those who are new to it will learn from this book's distinctive and modern perspective—using twenty-first century scholarship on Jesuit slaveholding, the sexual abuse crisis, and other contemporary issues—on 500 years of Jesuit history in the United States.