| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Saving the Heartland: Catholic Missionaries in Rural America, 1920-1960. By Jeffrey D. Marlett. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002. xii, 233 pp. $40.00, ISBN 0-87580-291-5.)

This book provides an account of the Catholic rural life movement from its beginnings in the 1920s until its decline at the end of the 1950s. One of the lesser-known chapters in American Catholic history, the movement was influenced both by Catholic thought and by secular agrarian and environmental ideas. Operating on the assumption that farm life was natural and Godlike and thus far preferable to urban life, the movement sought to improve the spiritual and material quality of life for Catholics living in rural America and to encourage urban Catholics to move to the countryside. Some Catholic rural life advocates even hoped to spread the Catholic faith among non-Catholics through the use of motor missions. Although various dioceses, religious orders, and organizations implemented many Catholic rural life projects, the movement received some degree of central guidance from the National Catholic Rural Life Conference (NCRLC), which was established at a meeting in St. Louis in 1923. More integrated into American society than were most Catholic organizations of that time, the NCRLC worked closely with non-Catholics in the American Country Life Association, with whom it shared a common concern for rural America. . . .

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