Book of the Month:

Robert L. Dorman. Hell of a Vision: Regionalism and the Modern American West. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012.

reviewed by Brett Hendrickson

There are two continua at play in Robert Dorman’s fascinating study of how the West has been perceived and handled over the past century and a half. The first and most prominent of these continua, found in the subtitle of the book, is the tension between regionalism and national unity. The second is the long-running debate about what land in the West can and should do: new frontier of agricultural and industrial paradise or unique setting of magnificent and virgin landscapes that are already spoken for by nature, by Indians, or by “authentic westerners.” The author does a wonderful job of allowing the story of the American West to move to and fro on these continua, and the reader can enjoy the sparks that fly when competing claims and ideas for the region and for the nation scrape against one another.

The question of regionalism is begged when one talks about the American West, and the cast of characters Dorman depicts in his book know this. From John Wesley Powell’s vision of a managed settlement of the West, to the Bureau of Indian Affair’s assimilationist manipulations of Native Americans, to Edward Abbey’s radical and environmental isolationism, to the Sierra Club’s paradoxical plea that the West be saved as a common and nation-wide heritage, it has long been up for debate how much the West should be known as its own special place, or if it should be known as an integral extension of the rest of the country. To complicate this debate about identity, the regionalism of the West has so often broken down into more and more minute expressions of localism, often going far beyond the typical divisions of Pacific Northwest, California, Mormon Country, Great Basin, Rocky Mountains, Southwest, Plains, and Texas.

Tensions about use of the West are tied to the question of region vs. nation. The anti-regionalists, to over-simplify Dorman’s fine analysis, want the area to be planned, tilled, ranched, mined, and managed as part of the national project. An example of this that Dorman discusses is historian Karl Wittfogel’s fear that the exploited, nationalized West could become a despotic “hydraulic society” that depended on “centralized works of water control.” The regionalists, who often include Native American groups as well as Mexican Americans, not to mention Western exceptionalists like Wallace Stegner, Willa Cather, and Earth First!, remind the would be exploiters and national project builders that the region cannot be made in the image of the East. The Dust Bowl, the poverty of reservations, and the contentious localism within the region itself make their point abundantly clear.

Another fascinating and provocative point that Dorman makes has to do with academic fashions and the notion of region. Take these examples:

[The regionalists’] cardinal sin was to attempt to define the regional characteristics of the West (aridity, wide-open spaces, predominant federal ownership of land, etc.). To do so was to “essentialize” the West—to fix its characteristics as a given, an essence—which to the postmodern, poststructuralist mindset of the 1990s was the gravest of scholarly errors....Historian Virginia Scharff declared that to “claim any object, idea, place, process, or people for the category ‘West’ is to fix things, thoughts, and social processes, and lives that are, historically, only contingently, contradictorily, and discontinuously Western” (176-7).

The opposing view:

Other scholars begged to differ with this assessment of regionalism, continuing to find it a potent source of cultural radicalism. Conceptually, their focus was on the subregional localist West....Regionalism was therefore “an alternative and oppositional tradition, one that worked against the construction of nation and empire and that challenged the construction of masculine and feminine that underwrote the projects of nation and empire” (177-8).

Readers of this blog will not be surprised to hear that religion is barely mentioned in Dorman’s book. But one does not need to try very hard to apply Dorman’s observations about regionalism and its discontents to the study of religion in the West. This reader was inspired by Dorman’s book to think more about questions of regional religious study vis-à-vis the study of religion in all of North America. We know that regionalists tell stories that complicate nationalist myths. But we also know that regionalists can reify localist myths. That’s why we keep working and why books like Dorman’s are so helpful.

A Wolfish History of Religions in the West

by Thomas S. Bremer

Earlier this month the world received news that 832F had been killed.  As reported in the New York Times and elsewhere, a hunter brought down the most famous and widely recognizable of the Yellowstone wolves fifteen miles outside of the national park boundaries in Wyoming.

As someone prone to pondering the cultural significance of Yellowstone’s history, I found myself thinking about 832F, the alpha female of the Lamar Canyon pack, and was surprised by my ambivalence over her death.  Perhaps my mixed feelings reflect a broader cultural ambivalence modern westerners have held in their regard for not only wolves, but wildlife in general.

832F, as the Times reporter Nate Schweber points out in his article, had achieved the status of “rock star” among certain wildlife aficionados.  She was, by my reckoning, a fully aestheticized commodity in a tourist economy of wildlife, national parks, and outdoor adventure.  In eco-tourist discourses on Yellowstone, the image of the wolf has become an iconic figure representing the virtues of biodiversity, wildness, and a benevolent humanity that brings rational science to bear on a compassionate regard for animals. Moreover, the possibility of wolf sightings in the highly managed landscapes of Yellowstone National Park contributes to the authenticity of the park for tourist visitors; to see live wolves in the wild affirms in touristic discourses that Yellowstone is indeed an authentically wild place, and therefore a more appealing tourist destination, itself an ironic development that belies the claim of wildness.

On the other hand, the very wildness of wolves is what threatens another sort of economy and discourse, that of ranchers and wildlife managers in areas surrounding the park.  Particularly for agricultural interests, the wolf represents a dangerous predator whose attacks on livestock imperil the very foundations of western civilization, besides harming their own personal financial interests.  There are plenty of folks in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, as well as throughout the western United States, who are convinced that extermination of wolves is a good thing, in fact necessary for the profitable success of the livestock industries.

As a historian of American religions, I wonder what sort of critical perspective I might contribute to such debates.  I am not sure a good religious history of wolves has been written, although Barry Lopez’s impressive book Of Wolves and Men includes numerous references to cultural traditions and folkloric legends that rely on religious orientations.  Lopez contends, “The truth is we know little about the wolf.  What we know a good deal more about is what we imagine the wolf to be” (3).  As I reflect on the human imagination of the various subspecies of Canis lupus, it seems to me that the critical questions for scholars of religions have to do with how religious orientations, perspectives, assumptions, practices, and images have contributed to and informed various wolfian discourses. 

For those of us interested specifically in the western regions of North America, one discourse with urgent political ramifications has to do with the reintroduction of wolf populations in areas where wolves had been earlier exterminated.  Scholars of religions could help elucidate historical and anthropological perspectives on religious considerations underlying the cultural ambivalence toward wolves that informs both sides of the debate. Insight into the religious aspects of collective attitudes toward the Yellowstone wolves, I surmise, will take us beyond wolves and far outside the park boundaries of Yellowstone, for it ultimately concerns self-understandings of the human relationship to nature, animals, and the places we deem as wild.  Perhaps we might even come to terms with both the sadness and the necessity of losing 832F to the hunter’s skillfully placed shot.

Approaches to Studying Irreligion and Secular Spirituality in the Pacific Northwest

by Dusty Hoesly

When scholars write about religion in the Pacific Northwest, they often claim that its defining feature is a lack of religion. In fact, one of the few book-length treatments of PNW religion is subtitled "The None Zone," a reference to the fact that nearly 25% of Oregonians and Washingtonians are unchurched and unaffiliated, or self-identify as not religious. (See Susanna Morrill’s Book of the Month post on that book here.) What's more, this has been the case historically, whereas states like New Hampshire and Vermont are only recently similarly irreligious. Those labeled by scholars as Nones are the largest bloc of respondents on social scientific surveys in the PNW.

Since no single religion dominated the region historically, there is no legacy of institutional affiliation or tradition that guides religious thinking or behavior. So what holds the region together? For most scholars, the rejection of institutional religion and a sense of place bind PNW cultural and spiritual identity. But what is the import of this rejection of religious identification? And what kind of spiritualities, values, and attitudes prevail amongst this heterogenous group?

In this post, I will summarize the work of several scholars who study (ir)religion in the PNW, and then offer some suggestions for future research.

Tina Block, Assistant Professor at Thompson Rivers University in Canada, offers a historical perspective in her essay "Religion, Irreligion, and the Difference Place Makes: The Case of the Postwar Pacific Northwest." For Block, during the post-World War II period, secularism came to be seen as an authentic part of PNW regional identity. PNW secularism is not a demographic but a cultural trend, one that was actively constructed by residents, she contends. Using newspapers, national surveys, church records, and oral interviews, Block traces the story of how sacred and secular are blurred in the PNW, and how irreligion came to be seen as a regional cultural marker. People across all gender, class, racial, and ethnic boundaries in the PNW are less religious than their counterparts in other regions. What unites these people is a sense of place that privileges cross-border interpenetration, high mobility rates, a myth of rugged individualism and independence, and the social acceptability of irreligiousness. In households and public constructions of the region's past and present, secularism became a hallmark of PNW culture in the social imaginary. In popular and academic representations of the PNW, writers ignore religion entirely or highlight the irreligiousness of the region.

Mark A. Shibley, Professor of Sociology at Southern Oregon University, has explored the spirituality of secular people in the PNW in several essays, combining sociological survey data and textual analysis of books written by regional authors. In "Secular but Spiritual in the Pacific Northwest," an essay in the volume Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest: The None Zone, Shibley contends that very few of the so-called Nones are actually atheists or agnostics. Rather, they largely fit into the squishy label "spiritual but not religious." Most Nones believe in God and miracles, according to survey data. These people experience the sacred in non-institutional forms through direct, personal experience. Shibley claims that "what is distinctive about religion in the Pacific Northwest is not the psychological orientation of individuals so much as social structural facts noted above--religious heterogeneity and low-affiliation rates" (141-142). He identifies three types of this secular spirituality: New Age and New Spirituality, nature and environmental religion, and anti-government apocalyptic survivalism. Connecting these strands are utopianism, millennialism, and dualism. Shibley reiterates similar themes in his essay "The Promise and Limits of Secular Spirituality in Cascadia," a chapter in Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia: Exploring the Spirit of the Pacific Northwest. Here he explores New Spirituality and Earth-based religions, asserting that "[in] Cascadia alternative spirituality is popular religion" (37). For Shibley and other scholars, environmentalism is a sort of civil religion in the PNW, and sustainability is the credo. Elsewhere in Cascadia, in a chapter called "Mapping Spirituality and Values in the Elusive Utopia," sociologist Andrew Grenville similarly shows that Cascadians are more liberal, libertarian, laissez-faire, DIY, and utopian than other regions in Canada and the U.S. They combine privatized belief, institutional skepticism, and personal responsibility (DIY) into a general "live and let live" regional attitude.

Frank Pasquale, a research associate with the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College (Hartford, CT), has been researching the values and practices of self-identified hard secularists in Portland and Seattle for several years. Using ethnographic research and membership surveys of secularist organizations, Pasquale investigates those who self-identify as atheist or agnostic, who he calls Nots (rather than Nones). In "The 'Nonreligious' in the American Northwest," an essay in Secularism and Secularity: Contemporary International Perspectives, Pasquale reports that 3-4% of Pacific Northwesterners are Nots, nearly double the national average. Most are white, male, middle-class, well-educated, liberal, and unmarried or without young children. Many interviewees and respondents express societal skepticism, metaphysical skepticism, a strong sense of individualism, wariness of dogmatism, and ambivalence about proselytizing of any particular view. Pasquale also observes that difficulties in data gathering occur, in part, because of a cultural stigma against atheists and the inconsistency of scholarly labeling (atheist, secular, skeptic, humanist, nonbeliever, etc.), problems that Pasquale tries to circumvent through participant observation and using subject-derived labels rather than scholar-imposed terms.

Monica R. Miller, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow for Religious Studies at Lewis & Clark College, has begun a research project in 2010 called "Youth Culture & the Remaking of Religion in Portland, Oregon." Recognizing that institutional forms of religion are declining amongst American youth, even as subjective spirituality remains strong, this effort attempts to gather data from Portland youths about the kinds of religiosity that they practice, with a specific emphasis on material culture. Through ethnographic on-the-street interviews and a survey, Miller and her research associates are examining the everyday religiosities of PNW youths in coffee shops, tattoo parlors, nightclubs and bookstores. Using sophisticated understandings of constructions of what counts as "religion," Miller interrogates along with her subjects the meaning of religion, what it looks like in everyday life, and how humanism and religion often commingle. This work will culminate in a series of articles and a manuscript called Faith in the Flesh: Manufactured Zones of Insignificance.

These approaches, ranging from historical to sociological to anthropological, converge around a few themes. Each of these scholars agree that religion looks different in the PNW, that irreligion is hallmark of the region, that secularity commingles with spirituality in personally meaningful ways, that secularism is a normative presence rather than the mere absence of religion, and that nature is a powerful element in PNW religious identity. There are some directions that future research should investigate.

Future scholarship should examine more fully the commingling of sacred and secular, carefully noting how conceptions of religiosity and spirituality are defined differently by scholars and by subjects themselves, and how various labels can overlap. For example, some evangelical emerging church folks may self-identify as Christian but also as "spiritual, but not religious." Others may claim to be both atheist and Buddhist, or agnostic and Catholic. And curiously absent is the contingent of folks who claim to be apathetic about religion; do they fit into scholarly boxes such as atheist, agnostic, spiritual, etc.? Scholars should begin with subjects' own views and language about what experiences they deem special, sacred, or extraordinary, and then proceed to develop scholarly categories based on these first-order terms, rather than imposing labels upon subjects who must check boxes which are more convenient for researchers than messy but accurate descriptors of individuals' beliefs and practices.

Definitions of secular and sacred are messy and interpenetrating, and scholars must dig into the nitty-gritty to get at where the people are to see their everyday spiritualities. In what ways is a search for authenticity similar to a spiritual seeking, while also a critique of institutional forms of religion? How does the region's DIY culture relate to creativity and homegrown spiritual renewal? Does the region's artisanal and craft traditions influence religious and spiritual attitudes? How are popular cultural norms integrated with or divergent from religious identities? And if consumption is also production in the postmodern age and in the PNW, how is this dynamic reflected in the region?

Few scholars have examined race and religion in the Pacific Northwest. In what ways are indigenous and Asian religions, for example, appropriated in the PNW, and are these appropriations different than in other regions? Do Asian American religiosities look the same in the PNW as in California or New York or Atlanta? What is the history of interactions between white supremacist religions in the region and other religious groups? What are the specific issues Native American religionists face? Why are racial minority groups similarly less religious than their counterparts in other regions?

Scholars also under-emphasize the cultural and religious divide between the more urban and liberal parts of Oregon and Washington, which lie west of the Cascade mountain range, and the more rural and conservative parts east of the mountains. When scholars explore the irreligiousness of the PNW, they are largely talking about Portland, Seattle, and other major urban centers rather than the smaller communities that comprise most of each state's geography. A fuller exploration of PNW religion must head east from the cities. Other comparisons could be made between the historically low-affiliation rates in the PNW with the recent surge of secularism in New England states like Vermont and New Hampshire. In what ways does secularism in the two regions look similar or different?

Mount Hood, Oregon.  Photograph by Julie Kelly, via National Geographic

Lastly, despite what many commentators claim, the natural beauty of the PNW is not a singular explanation for its lack of institutional religious affiliation. Few, if any, empirical studies include data about the proclivity of Pacific Northwesterners towards nature and environmental religion. This argument, instead, rests mostly on anecdotal evidence. Similarly, when scholars argue that PNW regional religious identity rests on a sense of place, they often suggest that this sense of place is stronger and more defining than in other regions of the U.S. But this claim seems dubious to me. Anyone reading Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey, or Terry Tempest Williams will clearly see a sense of place pervading their conceptions of their regions, and no less strongly than in the PNW. Natural beauty and a sense of place are not enough to distinguish PNW religiosity from the rest of the country. To hear many scholars tell it, PNW mountain ranges are responsible for the region's secularism and its sacredness. Instead, scholars need to examine how constructions of nature and wilderness contribute to the creation of a secular regional identity.

Book of the Month:

Patricia O'Connell Killen and Mark Silk, eds., Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest: The None Zone

Review by Susanna Morrill

Like magma from below the religion’s volcanoes, religion in the Pacific Northwest is an energetic, viscous fluid that is capable of altering the public landscape, galvanizing citizens for action, but not in ways easily predicted or directed by leaders of religious organizations (18).

With these words, Patricia O’Connell Killen sums up the religious landscape of the Pacific Northwest. Having lived in the Northwest for the past eight years, for me, this simile effectively captures religion’s complicated presence here. As the editors and authors of this 2004 volume note, about 63% of the region’s population (Oregon, Washington, and Alaska) remain unaffiliated with any religious institution and no one institutional religious tradition dominates (or has ever dominated) the region, as is the norm in other areas of the country (22). Yet Northwesterners live, act, and talk in ways that are profoundly religious. A fascinating problem: How do we as teachers and scholars understand and study regional religious expressions that are so fluid and non-institutional? This is the task that the authors of The None Zone tackle with great success and in short order (the book is only 202 pages, including appendix and index). I used the book as an effective backbone for an upper level course on religions of the Pacific Northwest and, at the same time, it has provided a starting point for my own research on religion in the Northwest.

Killen, Silk, and their host of authors offer to students and researchers scholarly tools—good tools—to use, to change, to challenge. By creating some guiding categories and concepts, they establish a concrete starting point for understanding religious life in the Pacific Northwest. Of particular help is how they breakdown the religious landscape of the Northwest into four broad streams: fading semi-establishment religions, “sectarian entrepreneurs,” religions of the Pacific Rim, and those who identify as secular, but spiritual. With these categories they begin to capture the viscous, hidden, and flexible religious reality of the region.

The book has an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion written by various scholars who live and work in Oregon and Washington. As with all the books in this “Religion by Region” series (edited by Mark Silk and Andrew Walsh), much of the data used in the book is derived from the North American Religions Atlas (generated in 2000 from responses by religious groups) and the American Religious Identification Survey (generated in 2001 from responses by individuals).

However, the authors take both historical and sociological approaches to the material. Initially a bit disconcerting, I found these variegated methodologies worked extremely well in the classroom. They provoked students to think critically about the advantages and disadvantages of historical and sociological approaches to understanding religious life in this region and, more generally, to studying religion. Killen and Mark Shibley, for instance, give us the sociological, religious, and cultural lay of the land in the first chapter, emphasizing the region’s peculiarity: that “nones,” (those who claim no religious affiliation or identification) make up almost a quarter of the population in Oregon and Washington, a rate much higher than the national 14% (41). In the second chapter, Dale E. Soden offers a history of the semi-establishment religions of the Pacific Northwest: Catholicism, mainline Protestants, and Reform and Conservative Jews. The fact that the establishment religion is actually a grouping of three disparate, often conflicting religions demonstrates the historical religious heterogeneity of the region. James Wellman, using interviews with clergy, creates a profile of the regionally surging “sectarian entrepreneurs,” mostly non-denominational and Holiness/Pentecostal evangelicals who effectively employ business models and media communications (80). Lance D. Laird writes about religions of the Pacific Rim, skillfully combining in his discussion Native American traditions; traditions from East, Southeast, and South Asia; and religion of the Pacific Islands. Shibley takes up the formidable task of capturing and talking about those who claim to be secular but spiritual, those people taking full advantage the opportunities offered to them in the “open religious market” of the Pacific Northwest: New Age adherents, anti-government groups, and those engaging in “earth-centered spirituality” (140, 142). Killen finishes the book summarizing what has gone before, suggesting future avenues of research, and offering concluding insights on the material.

Occasionally, the brevity of the book detracts from the overall success of it. The main focus of the book is Oregon and Washington. Alaska is rarely mentioned beyond the introductory, contextualizing chapter and, when it is, the mentions are brief and not very elucidating. Within the larger series, this grouping seems like the best home for Alaska, but, at the same time, the little information we have suggests that Alaska is different enough from Oregon and Washington that it may deserve its own chapters or parts within the book. Native traditions in Alaska have a wider and weightier public presence than they do in Oregon and Washington (15.6% of the population in Alaska is of Native American or Alaskan Native heritage compared to less than 2% of the population in Oregon and Washington), while the long history of Orthodox Christianity in the state deserves a more in-depth and extended treatment (106). My sense is that there is simply not a lot of scholarship on religion in Alaska. In general, Native American traditions get short shrift in the book. Lance D. Laird successfully finds similarities in the influential yet peripheral status of Native American and Asian religions, but otherwise these religious traditions are different enough that they do not fit together completely comfortably in one chapter.

The category of “nones” is perhaps most exciting for scholars of Northwest religious life. Killen wonders if they are manifestations of the process of secularization and/or if they represent a new kind of modern American religiosity. This is a pertinent question in the present day when, nationally, more and more people identify with this moniker. Can the religious history of the Northwest help to illuminate these national trends? Is the region a kind of religious frontier that will send eastward missionaries of a new religious expression, Whitmans of the “none”-based spirituality? Can scholars of this region’s religious life discover valuable questions and concepts that will help illuminate this growing trend in the religious landscape of the U.S.? This book asks and provokes important questions. It is a valuable tool in the classroom and serves as the base of what I hope will be a burgeoning scholarship on the religious life of the Northwest, a scholarship that, in turn, may help us better understand larger trends within the religious landscape of the country.

Editor’s note: Have you read this book? What do you think about it? Join the conversation and leave your thoughts in the comments! If you have a suggestion for a future book of the month, or if you would like to review a book for the book of the month series, please contact us. Next month, Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp reviews Hokulani K. Aikau’s A Chosen People, a Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawai'i (University of Minnesota Press, 2012).