This lively survey ranges across several centuries of change in the
ways historians have thought and written about religion in America.
In particular, John F. Wilson is concerned with how historians have
perceived religion's relationship to the political organization of
our country. He begins by establishing the genesis of religion as a
specialized area of American history in the nineteenth century, and
then discusses religious history's development through the early
1970s. Along the way he considers topics ranging from the "long
shadow" the Puritans have cast over our comprehension of religion
in American history to the ascendancy of such institutions as the
University of Chicago as systematizing forces in religious
scholarship.
Wilson then discusses how scholars, since the early 1970s, have
sought to ground their accounts of American religious trends and
events in ways that either avoid or transcend references to
Puritanism. The rise of comparative religious histories, Wilson
notes, has been the welcome outcome. Moving into the present,
Wilson explores a range of behaviors, if not beliefs, that might be
understood as religious aspects of American life and looks at how
the spiritual or religious dimensions of American cultural life
have been expressed in gnosticism, the mass media, and
consumerism.
One commentator, Wilson notes, suggested that there are no
longer any religions as such in America today, but only religious
"brands." Wilson himself sees America as a place where there is
room for Old World traditions and new spiritual initiatives, a
modern nation remarkably hospitable to ancient preoccupations.
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