Building Community, Keeping the Faith

The German Catholic immigrants who founded St. John the Baptist parish on the central Minnesota prairie effected a remarkable transfer of tradition to their new environment. Fred W. Peterson reveals how they inherited folk culture, aesthetic values, and religious beliefs which were directly embodied in the brick farmhouses, dairy farms, and churches they built between 1858 and 1915. Building Community, Keeping the Faith is compelling reading for students of architecture, religion, immigration, and ethnicity -- indeed for anyone interested in the complex influence European culture exerted on the development of America.