Rogue Scholar

Authentically Black and Truly Catholic: The Rise of Black Catholicism in the Great Migration (NYU Press, 2017) chronicles how Black people transformed the Catholic Church in Chicago from the Great Migration through the Black Power revolution.

“‘Real Good and Sincere Catholics’: White Catholicism and Massive Resistance to Desegregation in Chicago, 1965-1968” (Religion and American Culture, 2020) argues that white Catholic racism and massive resistance to integration should be considered primary sources for the telling of U.S. Catholic and U.S. religious history.

Body & Blood: Catholic Horror in America (with Jack Lee Downey, Kathleen Holscher, and Michael Pasquier, forthcoming 2026) unearths all the ways in which Catholicism is a wellspring of horror, reimagining the genre and offering a provocative retelling of history.

Catholics and the Making of MAGA: How an Immigrant Church Became America’s Law and Order Faith (forthcoming, 2027) explores how a distinctly Catholic tradition has animated rightwing politics in America from the race riots of the 1920s through to the January 6th insurrection, illuminating the religious roots of today’s MAGA movement.

Cressler’s public writing ranges from history and theology to culture criticism, including a meditation on Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass for The Atlantic, a Wilbur-award-winning Religion News Service series “Beyond the Most Segregated Hour,” articles on Catholics and politics for America and U.S. Catholic, and essays on horror in film and horrors in history for The Revealer. He’s been interviewed on national radio and podcasts including NPR’s 1A, America’s Jesuitical and The Gloria Purvis Podcast, Straight White American Jesus, among others. You can see his full C.V. here.