Goodreads asked Kimba Allie Tichenor:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Kimba Allie Tichenor I have always been interested in how religious belief informs political debates in societies that define themselves as secular. As a German historian, I knew that most books on Catholicism in West Germany assumed a brief resurgence of religious influence in the 1950s, but this influence ended by the mid-1960s. This loss of influence was associated with the collapse of the milieu. Certainly this milieu did collapse, but the role of the Catholic Church in the 1970s abortion debate in Germany suggested that Catholicism's influence on German politics was far from over. So what I wanted to know was if the so-called Catholic milieu that shaped Catholic life from cradle to grave was in fact dead, what had replaced it? And how is it even to this day a much smaller Catholic Church in Germany continues to exercise significant influence, especially on issues of gender and sexuality?

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