Despite ongoing public commentary about how the rise of religious “nones” reveals that “America lost its religion,” a look at newspaper headlines this past week makes clear that religion remains a powerful force in contemporary America. Some people believe that this enduring religiosity can heal and unite a wounded, fractured nation. The most famous proponent of this positive vision of American religion is President Joe Biden, “one of the most overtly religious presidents in recent history,” according to John Carr of Georgetown University. At last week’s National Prayer Breakfast, Biden spoke of the power of faith to bring Americans together. “It shows the way forward, as one nation in a common purpose, to respect one another, to care for one another, to leave no one behind,” he said.
But religion is not just a source of common ground–it’s a source of conflict and controversy. Peloton users, for example, are debating the inclusion of spiritual and religious elements in exercise classes. California church-goers who objected to pandemic restrictions on indoor worship are celebrating the recent Supreme Court decision that the state’s rules violate the Constitution. And Christian nationalists are showing themselves to be more likely to be skeptical of and misinformed about Covid-19 vaccines. Last week, a protest in Los Angeles that briefly shut down a mass vaccination site at Dodger Stadium revealed the convergence of religion with the anti-vaccination movement. “Save Your Soul Turn Back Now,” read the sign of one protestor.
Of course, the idea that religion matters is nothing new to Anxious Bench readers. In the broader field of American history, though, I find that I need to continue to make the case that religion is something that historians must consider as seriously as race, class, and gender. This blindspot is a problem that Jon Butler discussed over a decade and a half ago, when he observed that religion “appears as a jack-in-the-box” that pops up only occasionally, and often only to add “color or peculiarity” to the study of modern American history. As he wrote in 2004, “historians should grapple seriously with religion in modern American private and public life because doing less produces substantial misinterpretations of that history and the many peoples who made it.”
For this reason, I’m grateful for a new book, Wiley Blackwell’s Companion to American Religious History, which can serve as a valuable tool in introducing U.S. historians to the rich scholarship on American religion. The book was published just this past Friday and, given the diverse scholars that it brings together, was the focus of a lively panel discussion at the American Society of Church History conference on the same day. But what excites me about this book is that it isn’t useful for just church historians – it’s useful for all historians, especially those for whom the study of religion is a new enterprise. (At this point, I must make two disclosures. First, I’m one of the contributors to this volume. Second, I’m trained in U.S. immigration and political history and turned to religious studies only later in my career. I know firsthand that engaging in religious studies can be daunting for those who are new to it.)
Over the weekend, I was fortunate to talk about this book with Benjamin Park, the editor of this volume. Park is Assistant Professor of History at Sam Houston State University and the author of American Nationalisms: Conceiving Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783-1833 and, most recently, Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier.
MB: There are lots of big books about American religious history out there – so what makes this book different?
BP: Not only are there a lot of big volumes on American religion out there, but many of them are excellent! I was very skeptical when Blackwell approached me about putting this textbook together, but I concluded a new book could make a contribution by focusing on two themes: the centrality of religion to America’s history, and the diversity of America’s religious expressions. On the first point, I wanted to provide a sourcebook for those who teach American history but may not be fully conversant with the recent developments in the field of American religion; these chapters, therefore, are meant to accompany classes that cover the major moments and themes of the past. On the issue of diversity, I asked the authors to focus on particular moments, figures, or issues that highlight the vast spectrum of American spirituality. Altogether, I hope that teachers and students will be able to use this volume to better integrate religion into history classes.
MB: How do you hope this book will change how we understand, research, and teach American religious history?
BP: As many of these chapters are microhistories, they embody the rich potential of using quixotic topics in order to understand much larger themes. Students will encounter a cast of characters who prove the relevance of religion to American life, whether it is looking at how the forced movement of Indigenous people in colonial Pennsylvania highlighted the politics of pluralism, the Mormon problem in Utah during the 1850s as a lens through which to see the origins of the Civil War, or the dissecting the proliferation of Jewish characters in the “Golden Age” of modern television. There are certainly plenty of people and events that deserve inclusion but did not receive space in this volume—sadly, the work could not be comprehensive—but I hope what did get covered serves a purpose. No matter what class a professor is teaching, or what they particular angle is, I hope there is a chapter that they might find worthwhile to assign.
MB: One thing that’s exciting about this book is that it brings together so many wonderful scholars, and it has such breadth and depth. I wonder what you, as the editor, learned about American religious history through leading this project. Are there any stories or ideas that appear in this book that you appreciated learning? Any new insights that might have changed your own scholarship?
BP: My goodness, I learned so much! Even if there were no other benefits from this volume, I came away from the project confident in our field’s relevance and development. While I could highlight a number of key lessons, perhaps what stood out the most was the centrality of Indigenous cultures to America’s religious tradition. Indeed, each of the volume’s five sections has at least one chapter devoted to Native peoples, and the theme kept popping up in the other chapters, too. If I had any regrets for the volume, it is that the chapters that I initially envisioned to cover the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which would also have covered Indigenous religions, ended up falling through. So, while there are certainly plenty of future directions for the field, it seems one of them is to follow the lead of other scholars, like those affiliated with the Native American and Indian Studies Association, to better flesh out this part of the story.
MB: The past year has been exciting for you – not only did this volume get published, but so did your other book, Kingdom of Nauvoo. What are you working on now?
BP: Working with these fine scholars, like yourself, on this volume was such an amazing experience, I don’t know I’ll ever be able to move on! But I am actually working on two monographs. One is a general survey of Mormonism in America that I am writing for W. W. Norton/Liveright, which I hope to finish in the next two years. The other is an examination of the role of religious ideas among America’s radical abolitionists during the 1840s and 1850s, which is under contract with Princeton University Press. Both projects scratch my perpetual itch of tracing how peripheral ideas and figures shed light on America’s dynamic, diverse, and dramatic religious tradition.
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