A Companion to American Religious History
Blackwell Companions to American History
1. Edition February 2021
400 Pages, Hardcover
Handbook/Reference Book
A collection of original essays exploring the history of the various American religious traditions and the meaning of their many expressions
The Blackwell Companion to American Religious History explores the key events, significant themes, and important movements in various religious traditions throughout the nation's history from pre-colonization to the present day. Original essays written by leading scholars and new voices in the field discuss how religion in America has transformed over the years, explore its many expressions and meanings, and consider religion's central role in American life.
Emphasizing the integration of religion into broader cultural and historical themes, this wide-ranging volume explores the operation of religion in eras of historical change, the diversity of religious experiences, and religion's intersections with American cultural, political, social, racial, gender, and intellectual history. Each chronologically-organized chapter focuses on a specific period or event, such as the interactions between Moravian and Indigenous communities, the origins of African-American religious institutions, Mormon settlement in Utah, social reform movements during the twentieth century, the growth of ethnic religious communities, and the rise of the Religious Right. An innovative historical genealogy of American religious traditions, the Companion:
* Highlights broader historical themes using clear and compelling narrative
* Helps teachers expose their students to the significance and variety of America's religious past
* Explains new and revisionist interpretations of American religious history
* Surveys current and emerging historiographical trends
* Traces historical themes to contemporary issues surrounding civil rights and social justice movements, modern capitalism, and debates over religious liberties
Making the lessons of American religious history relevant to a broad range of readers, The Blackwell Companion to American Religious History is the perfect book for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in American history courses, and a valuable resource for graduate students and scholars wanting to keep pace with current historiographical trends and recent developments in the field.
The Centrality, Diversity, and Malleability of American Religion
Benjamin Park
Part 1: Colonialisms
Nemasket/Middleborough and Religious Diversity in Colonial New England
Richard Boles
A View from the Philadelphia Barracks: Religion in the Mid-Atlantic
Rachel Wheeler
Africana Religions in Early America
Jason Young
Part 2: Establishment
The Loyalist Church of England Clergy and the Politics of Martyrdom in the American Revolution
Peter Walker
Freeborn Garrettson's Revolution: Religion and the American War for Independence
Christopher Jones
The First Wall of Separation between Church and State: Slavery and Disestablishment in Late-Eighteenth-Century Virginia
Sarah Barringer Gordon
Abraham Remembered: An African Captivity Tale in Early America
Jon Sensbach
The White River Witch-Hunt and Indigenous Peoples' Negotiations with Missionaries in the Era of the Early Republic
Lori Daggar
The Shakers and the Perfecting Spirit in Early America
Jennifer Dorsey
Part 3: Expansion
David Walker and Black Prophetic Religion
Christopher Cameron
Down with the Convent!": Anti-Catholicism and Opposition to Nuns in Antebellum America
Cassandra Yacovazzi
Ecclesiology and the Varieties of Romanticism in American Christianity, 1825-1850
Brent Sirota
Being Haudenosaunee: Seeing Indigenous Ontology Under American Settler Colonialism
Christian Gonzales
Mormons and Territorial Politics in the American Civil War Era
Brent M. Rogers
Black Christianity after Emancipation
Nicole Myers Turner
Part 4: Imperialism
In Search of a "Working Class Religion": Religion, Economic Reform, and Social Justice
Janine Drake
The Businessman's Gospel: Making Business Christian
Nicole Kirk
The Prohibition Crusade and American Moral Politics
Joseph Locke
Race, Ethnicity and Gender Among Early Pentecostals
Arlene Sanchez-Walsh
Religion and U.S. Federal Indian Policy
Sarah Dees
"For the Good of Mankind": Atomic Exceptionalism, Religion, and United States Empire in the Postwar Pacific
Carleigh Beriont
Part 5: Modernity
The Hate that Hate Produced: Representing Black Religion in the Twentieth Century
Vaughn A. Booker
The Pentagon Exorcism: 1960s Counter-Culture and the Occult Revival
Joseph Laycock
Native American Christians and the Varieties of Modern Pentecostalism
Angela Tarango
Sex, Politics, and the Rise of the New Christian Right
Emily Suzanne Johnson
Immigration and Religion Among Chinese Americans, 1965 to the Present
Melissa Borja
Modern Judaism and the Golden Age of Television
Jennifer Caplan
