When Americans migrated west, they carried with them not only their
hopes for better lives but their religious traditions as well. Yet
the importance of religion in the forging of a western identity has
seldom been examined.
In this first historical overview of religion in the modern
American West, Ferenc Szasz shows the important role that organized
religion played in the shaping of the region from the
late-nineteenth to late-twentieth century. He traces the major
faiths over that time span, analyzes the distinctive response of
western religious institutions to national events, and shows how
western cities became homes to a variety of organized faiths that
cast only faint shadows back east.
While many historians have minimized the importance of religion
for the region, Szasz maintains that it lies at the very heart of
the western experience. From the 1890s to the 1920s, churches and
synagogues created institutions such as schools and hospitals that
shaped their local communities; during the Great Depression, the
Latter-day Saints introduced their innovative social welfare
system; and in later years, Pentecostal groups carried their
traditions to the Pacific coast and Southern Baptists (among
others) set out in earnest to evangelize the Far West. Beginning in
the 1960s, the arrival of Asian faiths, the revitalization of
evangelical Protestantism, the ferment of post-Vatican II
Catholicism, the rediscovery of Native American spirituality, and
the emergence of New Age sects combined to make western cities such
as Los Angeles and San Francisco among the most religiously
pluralistic in the world.
Examining the careers of key figures in western religion, from
Rabbi WilliamFriedman to Reverend Robert H. Schuller, Szasz
balances specific and general trends to weave the story of religion
into a wider social and cultural context. "Religion in the Modern
American West" calls attention to an often overlooked facet of
regional history and broadens our understanding of the American
experience.
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