Old-style Catholics' migration to Kansas town an example of 'cultural secession' that has implications for societal diversity

Students at the local Catholic school sing with Father
Paul-Isaac Franks (Atlantic photo by Bryan Schutmaat)

We've written more than once about how a person's political views can influence where they move, but a small Kansas town dominated by old-school Roman Catholics is an extreme example of the desire to live among like-minded people, Emma Green reports for The Atlantic.

In St. Mary's, Kansas, a town of about 4,000, the vast majority of people are Catholic. That's not an accident: In the 1960s, many Catholics objected to the liturgical changes made by the Second Vatican Council and sought to practice their faith more traditionally (saying Mass in Latin, for example). So they formed the Society of St. Pius X, commonly called SSPX, named for a pope (1903-14) who opposed modernism, and have settled in a number of small communities all over the world.

Catholics from all over the country have settled in St. Mary's over the past 40 years, drawn by the opportunity to practice their faith apart from mainstream America. The town isn't cut off from modern life—people watch Hulu and shop at Sam's Club—but SSPX Catholicism permeates the town. The mayor and the entire city council are SSPX Catholics. Few women work, and families are large, since they don't believe in using birth control; so many children have been born in St. Mary's that the SSPX population has more than doubled the town's size since the 1960s, Green reports.

SSPX communities aren't a new concept. "Throughout American history, religious groups have walled themselves off from the rhythms and mores of society . . . These groups ostensibly have little in common, but they share a sense that living according to their beliefs while continuing to participate in mainstream American life is not possible. They have elected to undertake what might be termed cultural secession," Green reports. "Katherine Dugan, an assistant professor of religion at Springfield College, in Massachusetts, who studies Catholicism in the U.S., describes the desire for protected, set-apart communities as 'a natural American response to not liking what the cultural context is.'"

St. Marys, Kansas (Wikipedia map)

SSPX followers told Green they felt isolated by their faith before they moved to St. Mary's, that they were concerned about being labeled bigots by co-workers or friends, and that they worried about raising children in an increasingly secular society.

It's hard to measure just secular a nation is, but there's something to the SSPX followers' fears that the U.S. is becoming more secular. Millennials (those aged 23-38) are almost as likely to say they have no religion as they are to identify as Christians, Daniel Cox and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux report for FiveThirtyEight. That's perhaps unsurprising, they note, since a new national survey found that millennials are less likely than other generations to have been raised with strong ties to religion in the first place.

"In 2000, 41% of the country said they attended religious services once a week or more, compared to 14% in 2000 who said they never did. This year we found less than 30%; 29% of Americans say they attend religious services weekly or more, compared with 26% who now tell us they never attend," said Chuck Todd on Meet the Press last week, referring to a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

So, SSPX residents of St. Mary's aren't wrong when they say American society is changing. But, Green cautions: "The rise of more radical self-sorting poses a challenge to America’s experiment in multicultural democracy, enshrined in the motto e pluribus unum—'Out of many, one.' The dream of a diverse society is replaced with one in which different groups coexist, but mostly try to stay out of one another’s way. The ongoing experiment in St. Marys suggests what might be gained by such a realignment—and what might be lost."