Retelling U.S. Religious History

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.

Thomas A. Tweed is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent (1992).