Retelling U.S. Religious History

by Thomas A. Tweed

This collection marks a turning point in the study of the history of American religions. In challenging the dominant paradigm, Thomas A. Tweed and his coauthors propose nothing less than a reshaping of the way that American religious history is understood, studied, and taught.

The range of these essays is extraordinary. They analyze sexual pleasure, colonization, gender, and interreligious exchange. The narrators position themselves in a number of geographical sites, including the Canadian border, the American West, and the Deep South. And they discuss a wide range of groups, from Pueblo Indians and Russian Orthodox to Japanese Buddhists and Southern Baptists.

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction

318 pages, Paperback

First published December 6, 1996

Reviews

[Dan Gorman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant call for a top-to-bottom rewrite of American religious history. By including more ethnicities, non-Christian religions, and a wider geographic terrain that extends beyond America's borders, writers can produce a history that looks very different from older narratives that focused on white Protestants in the Northeast.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a bad book at all if you're aggressive with skimming the parts that aren't up your alley. Some of the essays – especially Tweed's intro, Taves's history of religion and sexuality in America, Braude's discussion of women's religious history, Finke's argument for a supply-side American religious history, and Martin's history of the contacts between Creeks, Europeans, and Africans in the Deep South – are really excellent, and worth the read by themselves, and will probably make an appearance in my courses' required reading lists.