STEME, EVELYN SAVIDGE. Ballots and Bibles: Ethnic Politics and the Catholic Church in Providence. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. xiii +256 pp. Introduction, notes, photographs, and index. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8014-4117-X.

     Evelyn S. Sterne's historical analysis of the interaction between religion and politics in Providence, Rhode Island, is particularly timely, given that the November 2004 election results have renewed debates about the impact of religion and values on voting trends. Moreover, her chapter on Americanization efforts during World War I resonates with concerns over the balance between civil liberties and national security that have emerged since 9/11. Like many social historians writing about politics recently, she has broadened the traditional definition of political involvement to encompass the activities of parishes, labor unions and civic organizations, as well as ethnic festivals, celebrations and controversies. Providence serves as a particularly interesting case study. By 1905 it had a Catholic majority arising from the growing presence of several ethnic groups—particularly Irish, Italian, and French-Canadians, many of them poor. At the same time, the city limited voting rights to property owners and did so until late 1920s. Therefore, well into the twentieth century, large numbers of Catholics remained effectively disenfranchised through their economic status, their lack of citizenship status, or by sex. Sterne demonstrates how Catholics consequently channeled their political and civic involvement through their parishes rather than through the ballot. Tensions seemed to arise within ethnic or national parishes as often as across ethnic lines, but a true solidarity based on a shared Catholicism did not emerge until after 1928, when property-holding restrictions were lifted in a campaign known as the "Bloodless Revolution."

     Sterne blends a rich, micro-analysis of local, community-based political and civic activism with a macro-analysis detailing how such trends fit in with larger national developments—including Progressive Era reform movements, World War I, and the New Deal coalition. Her chronological scope is also impressive. She begins her narrative in the antebellum period and ends her history in the New Deal era. Sterne's discussion of the role of Providence's Catholic women in politics in the beginning of the twentieth century makes an important contribution to the literature on the Progressive Era and on American Catholic history. She demonstrates how Catholic women deftly negotiated the often contradictory imperatives of domesticity and citizenship that were promoted both by the Catholic church and by the broader culture, first at the parish level and then within the larger community. She further suggests that while unions served an important role in achieving greater economic justice in Rhode Island and elsewhere, their membership was more limited than that of local parishes. Moreover, immigrants relied on parishes for a broad variety of functions, charity provision, neighborhood bonds, recreation, and civic engagement as well as religious devotion.