Religion and US Empire: Critical New Histories

by Tisa Wenger, Sylveste A Johnson

Overview

Shows how American forms of religion and empire developed in tandem, shaping and reshaping each other over the course of American history

The United States has been an empire since the time of its founding, and this empire is inextricably intertwined with American religion. Religion and US Empire examines the relationship between these dynamic forces throughout the country’s history and into the present. The volume will serve as the most comprehensive and definitive text on the relationship between US empire and American religion.

Whereas other works describe religion as a force that aided or motivated American imperialism, this comprehensive new history reveals how imperialism shaped American religion—and how religion historically structured, enabled, challenged, and resisted US imperialism. Chapters move chronologically from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, ranging geographically from the Caribbean, Michigan, and Liberia, to Oklahoma, Hawai’i, and the Philippines. Rather than situating these histories safely in the past, the final chapters ask readers to consider present day entanglements between capitalism, imperialism, and American religion. Religion and US Empire is an urgent work of history, offering the context behind a relationship that is, for better or worse, very much alive today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479810376
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	11/21/2023
Series:	North American Religions
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	373
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Tisa Wenger (Editor)
Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School. She is the author of We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (2009) and Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal (2017) and co-editor of our Religion and US Empire: Critical New Histories (forthcoming, August 2022).

Sylvester A. Johnson (Editor)
Sylvester A. Johnson is Professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech, and Assistant Vice Provost the Center for Humanities. He is the editor of Religion and US Empire: Critical New Histories (NYU Press, 2022), FBI and Religion: Faith and National Security Before and After 9/11 (California, 2017), and author of African American Religions, 1500–2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom (Cambridge, 2015).

Table of Contents

Introduction Tisa Wenger Sylvester A. Johnson 1

Part I Formations: Slavery, Settlers, and Salvation 17

1 Rebellion and Religion: Slavery and Empire in Early America Katharine Gerbner 19

2 Making Religion in Michilimackinac: Settler Secularism and US Empire Tisa Wenger 41

3 A Colony Called Freedom: Religion, Empire, and Black Christian Settlers Sylvester A. Johnson 63

Part II Biopolitics: Imperial Classifications, Sentimental Reform, and Indigenous Tactics of Survival 83

4 Religion on the Brink: Settler-Colonial Knowledge Production in the US Census Sarah Dees 85

5 Imperial Intersections: Social Surveys, Sentimental Biopolitics, and Religion at Hull House Cara Lea Burnidge 103

6 "They Call It Ghost Dance … But It's Feather Dance": Indigenous Histories in the Study of Religion and US Empire Jennifer Graber 124

Part III Entanglements: Global Networks, Christian Missions, and the Racial Projects of Us Empire 149

7 "The Same Blood as We in America": Industrial Schooling and American Empire Karine Walther 151

8 Black Spiritual Protest in Global Imperial Contexts, 1893-1920 Heather D. Curtis 179

9 An Evangelical Occupation: The Racial and Imperial Politics of US Protestant Missions in the Dominican Republic Christina C. Davidson 203

Part IV Dialectics: Wastelanding, Weaponry, and Capitalist Exclusions 229

10 The Trouble of an Indian Diocese: Catholic Priests and Sexual Abuse in Colonized Places Kathleen Holscher 231

11 Fire from Heaven: Napalm, the Drone, and Evangelical Territoriality in the Age of Empire Jonathan Ebel 253

12 American Islam, Settler Colonialism, and Democratic Empires in the Work of Robert D. Crane Zareena A. Grewal Brennan McDaniel 275

13 Decolonization™ Lucia Hulsether 298

Acknowledgments 321

Bibliography 323

About the Editors 349

About the Contributors 351

Index 355

Editorial Reviews

"Impressively crafted and imaginatively structured, this is a cutting-edge collection of essays on the entwining of American religion and empire. From Katharine Gerbner’s work on eighteenth-century legal codes regulating slave religion and suppressing slave rebellion through Lucia Hulsether’s consideration of the ongoing commodification of late-capitalist dissent, the collection’s offerings are rich, far ranging, and provocative."

Leigh Eric Schmidt

"This anthology is the opening salvo to how we could rethink the role of religion in American diplomatic history. The gap has been bridged between American foreign relations history and religion; we are now on the other side. Religion and US Empire charts a way forward in what is increasingly becoming an important field of American history."

H-Net Reviews

"An excellent volume that includes some of the very best scholars in the field of American religions. Each chapter addresses a different aspect of religion and empire, whose groundbreaking connections and contestation form an invaluable contribution to the field."

Chad Seales

"This volume provides a fresh historical-critical account of how religion structured, enabled, and challenged U.S. imperialism, serving as an important read for scholars of American religious history."

Journal of Presbyterian History