Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez

Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez is Associate Professor of Instruction at Temple University’s Religion Department. She received her Ph.D. in the History of Christianity from the University of Chicago. Her book, The Valiant Woman: The Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (University of North Carolina Press, 2016), explores Marian imagery and the female ideal in American popular culture. She also published an edited collection, Religion in Philadelphia.

Roman Catholic Church and Catholics

Philadelphia’s first Catholic Mass was heard in 1708. Despite English law prohibiting Catholic worship, broad religious tolerance had been laid out that year in the Pennsylvania Charter of Privileges by William Penn (1644-1718). The resulting legal tension came to a head in 1733 when a complaint about the “Romish chappell,” Saint Joseph’s in Willing’s Alley, ...