Protestant nativism reinvigorated where Catholicism clashed with American liberty ideals.

Evidence

For two principal reasons an undercurrent of Protestant nativism persisted into the new democratic America and revived in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. One reason lay in the character of American institutions. Catholic traditions continued to look dangerously un-American partly because they did not harmonize easily with the concept of individual freedom imbedded in the national culture. Americans regarded political liberty as their chief national attribute and supreme achievement. Observing the authoritarian organization of the Catholic Church and its customary association with feudal or monarchical governments, they were tempted to view American liberty and European popery as irreconcilable. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 38

Categorization

• XREF: Mechanism matches: threat construed as institutional incompatibility with the in-group’s core ‘way of life’ — an ideological, not biological, target, supporting the reader’s transition thesis. — connects to: A Catholic nomination in 1928 proved nativism’s structural retreat. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1976; Anti-Catholic nativism required a specific religious crisis beyond general economic tension — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 352; Nativists framed Catholic immigrants as a papal plot to subvert American institutions — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 39