German Catholics built separate German-language churches to resist Anglo-American assimilation

Evidence

The new Catholic immigrants settled together in the Midwest and replicated their German way of life in their new home, including their religious practices. In contrast to their English-speaking Irish Catholic compatriots, German immigrants felt isolated in American Catholic churches. As a result, they created separate churches where priests offered services in German. They built Catholic schools with lessons in German to avoid sending their children to secular public schools, which they perceived as godless. The German Catholic church discouraged its congregants from assimilating into Anglo-American norms it perceived as materialistic, hypocritical, vain, and immoral. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 407

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels Muslim American institution-building in response to marginalization — the book’s core analogy; echoes the reader’s interest in how minority groups create parallel structures.