Dichotomizing Religion and Civil Society? Catholicism in Germany and the USA Before the Second Vatican Council

This article argues in three different ways against a secularist dichotomization of religion and civil society in general and of Catholicism and civil society in particular. First, it historicizes the opposition between religion and civil society by reconstructing the involvement of the social sciences in the anti-Catholicism of the Kulturkampf of the nineteenth century, which continues to obstruct views of the practices and institutions of civil society to this day. Secondly, the article refutes this opposition at a performative level by using the examples of Germany and the USA to show how Catholicism was the motivating force behind numerous practices and institutions of civil society even before the Second Vatican Council. Thirdly, the Kulturkaumpfe in Germany and the USA clearly demonstrate how much the differentiation between bonding and bridging social capital is dependent on the question of social and state discrimination and/or on the problem of integration into society as a whole. The article thus makes clear the relevance of religion in general as a resource for civic action.