by John-Charles Duffy
Several months ago, I blogged
here about an introductory American religions course I was preparing around
the theme “religion and empire.” I’ve completed the syllabus (view
it here). While I’m dissatisfied with it in many ways (this is a first
run), I am pleased by how the “religion and empire” theme has helped to
integrate the American west more firmly into my course’s grand narrative of
religion in the United States.
Some West-related highlights:
* “The west” preoccupied Anglo-Americans from the colonial
period on, but of course “the west” with which they were preoccupied kept
shifting farther west. My students will learn to speak of a “trans-Appalachian”
west (Sept. 25) and a “trans-Mississippi” west (Oct. 16).
* In past iterations of this American religions course, I’ve
used Samuel Morse’s Imminent Dangers
to exemplify antebellum anti-Catholic nativism. This semester I’m using Lyman
Beecher’s A Plea for the West (Sept.
23).
* As in past semesters, I spotlight Protestant bids for
cultural dominance. In the past, Prohibition has been a central example; also,
Protestant reformers’ campaign against Mormon polygamy. The Mormons are still
in this semester’s syllabus, but Prohibition got the axe. Instead, I’m spotlighting
Protestantism’s role in the subordination of Hawaiians, Mexicans, Native
Alaskans, Asian immigrants, and Filipinos (Oct. 2, 14, 23, 30).
* The “new immigration” (1880s-1920s) enters my empire-themed
narrative as a look at U.S. religious minorities’ relations with empires
abroad. An autobiography of a Jewish emigrant from the Russian Empire is
balanced, geographically, by the autobiography of a Japanese Buddhist
missionary whose husband was interned during World War II (Nov. 4).
* Our readings on the post-WWII anti-colonialist struggles
of Mexican Americans and Native Americans tend to be situated in the trans-Mississippi
west (Nov. 11, 13).
* My discussion of religion in the Cold War includes a
special focus on the Vietnam War, which in turn includes a Vietnamese Buddhist
nun’s account of her trans-Pacific migration to the U.S. as a refugee (Nov.
18).
