Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal

Wenger, Tisa

ISBN 10: 1469634627 / ISBN 13: 9781469634623

Published by The University of North Carolina Press, 2017

About this Item

Item in very good condition! Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc.

Seller Inventory # 00109510876

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1469634627
• ISBN 13: 9781469634623
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Religious freedom is so often presented as a timeless American ideal and an inalienable right, appearing fully formed at the founding of the United States. That is simply not so, Tisa Wenger contends in this sweeping and brilliantly argued book. Instead, American ideas about religious freedom were continually reinvented through a vibrant national discourse — Wenger calls it “religious freedom talk” — that cannot possibly be separated from the evolving politics of race and empire.

More often than not, Wenger demonstrates, religious freedom talk worked to privilege the dominant white Christian population. At the same time, a diverse array of minority groups at home and colonized people abroad invoked and reinterpreted this ideal to defend themselves and their ways of life. In so doing they posed sharp challenges to the racial and religious exclusions of American life. People of almost every religious stripe have argued, debated, negotiated, and brought into being an ideal called American religious freedom, subtly transforming their own identities and traditions in the process. In a post-9/11 world, Wenger reflects, public attention to religious freedom and its implications is as consequential as it has ever been.

About the Author

Tisa Wenger, associate professor of American religious history at Yale University, is the author of We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom.