Anti-Catholic nativism decayed as intellectuals found race a more respectable enemy frame.

Evidence

Neither of the major traditions of nativist thought quite fitted the problem. The anti-radical theme, with its fears of imported discontent, applied to Europeans as a whole, and surely the new immigrants presented a more docile appearance than did Irish labor leaders or the German anarchists who hanged for the Haymarket Affair. Anti-Catholic nationalism, aside from failing to account for the new Jewish immigration, reeked of religious fanaticism which literate and cultured people now disavowed. On the eve of the A.P.A.’s rise to national prominence, a typical nativist intellectual rejoiced that the present movement against immigration would be free from attacks on Catholics. There was, however, a third nativist tradition—weaker than the other two but more adaptable to the purpose at hand. The old idea that America belongs peculiarly to the Anglo-Saxon race would define the special danger of the new immigration if one assumed that northern Europeans were at least first cousins to the Anglo-Saxons. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 567

Categorization

• XREF: Central to reader’s question: anti-Catholic (religious) nativism gave way to racial nativism partly because religious fanaticism repelled the literate — the enemy frame evolved toward more respectable scientific-sounding categories. — connects to: Economic distress was redirected into anti-Catholic conspiracy rather than class conflict. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 486; Racial nativism supplanted anti-Catholicism because it fit the new immigrant threat — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 567; Nativism’s ideological enemies got remade as biologically fixed racial ones — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1580 (+4 more)
• DEFINE: Documents the transition of the enemy category through religious to racial form with a clear causal mechanism — respectability among cultured elites.

Broader Connections

• Racial nativism supplanted anti-Catholicism because it fit the new immigrant threat #corroborates (0.90) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 567
• Nativism’s ideological enemies got remade as biologically fixed racial ones #expands (0.88) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1580
• Modern scientific racism displaced religion from the race concept. #expands (0.80) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 156
• Nativism abandoned ideological conversion for permanent racial exclusion once radical threat dissolved #corroborates (0.78) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1580
• Race gained social hegemony as religion declined, becoming a secularized civic theology #expands (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1345