by Thomas S. Bremer
The particular research methods and theoretical perspectives
employed in the study of religions in the American west suggest the kinds of
questions we ask and the insights we might gain from our scholarly inquiries.
But we can also think about the west itself as a particular methodological strategy
and theoretical perspective. Used this way, the west introduces a destabilizing
element into resilient historiographical paradigms of Christian triumphalism
that have burdened the more general field of American religious history. This
is an approach I found useful in my recent work writing a textbook on the
religious history of America.
The text I have written covers nearly six centuries of
religion in America, presented chronologically, while questioning students’
assumptions about both “religion” and “America.” The goal, and the authorial
challenge, was to present a “de-centered” narrative that allows students to
consider the various ways that people on the North American continent have
regarded themselves as religious and as American. One key intention of this
textbook is to guide students through the various issues at stake in how people
have imagined “religion” and have regarded “America” in ways that have produced
normative views of both.
The challenge in avoiding paradigms that imagine religion in
decidedly Protestant terms and that present America as the focus of a Christian
tale of triumphal destiny is to resist allowing the historical reality of
Protestant dominance to overwhelm the narrative by relying exclusively on
Christian categories and perspectives for telling the story. The tale I want to
present to students needs de-centering strategies that allow for a critical
distance on the narration of American religious history. One useful tactic for
achieving this is to bring attention early and often to the American west. This
approach highlights the multidirectional nature of contact, conquest, and
settlement of the continent while mitigating the teleological tendencies of a
story that moves inevitably westward toward a conclusion at the shoreline of
the Pacific Ocean. In short, my attempt to produce a different sort of story relies
to some extent on utilizing the American west as a deliberate strategy for
resituating the historical narrative.
The story of the English in America can be an instructive example
of how a western orientation can shift the emphasis of the historical
narrative. In fact, English claims in North America did not begin in Virginia;
before Jamestown, even before Roanoke, the English laid claim to California
when Francis Drake spent a month there in 1579. He was attempting to preempt the
claims of the Spaniards, the great Catholic nemesis of the Protestant
Englishman. Drake’s activities along the Pacific coast of North America draw
attention to how English interests were situated in the international politics
of religious conflicts; this suggests a different, more expansive context for
English colonization. From this standpoint, the internal theological
differences within the Church of England that brought Puritan settlers to New
England become a secondary, less consequential justification for a Protestant
presence in America.
On the other hand, undue emphasis on the west can distort
the historical narrative. Yes, the English claimed California before they sent
colonists to Virginia, but it remained an empty claim, impossible to enforce
and impractical to develop. In contrast, English Protestants who settled in Virginia,
New England, and the other colonies established an enduring presence; just as
importantly, they introduced religious narratives of providential
exceptionalism that have served well the consequent course of nation building
in America, with all of its questionable implications and often disastrous
consequences.
That traditional tale, with its origins in the Calvinist
proclivities of early Puritan colonists, became the conventional historiographical
narrative of American religious history, one that has proven remarkably durable.
It utilizes the figure of the west most often as the frontier of Christiandom,
marking a boundary to be crossed and subjugated. But a different story that reconfigures
the role of the western half of North America offers alternative narrative
opportunities. The west can serve as an effective strategy for de-centering the
tale of American religious history, not as the privileged space for a
counter-narrative, but as another point of departure for gaining multiple
perspectives on a religious history that cannot be reduced to any particular
group or place.
