Book Review: Mormonism and American Politics

Mormonism and American Politics. Edited by Randall Balmer and Jana Riess. 264 pp. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. $30.

Reviewed by Brenna Keegan

Mormonism and American Politics begins with the simple claim, “The story of Mormonism in America is inextricably tied to politics” (ix). Thirteen insightful case studies, written by some of the top Mormon studies scholars, persuasively argue the truth of this statement. Randall Balmer and Jana Riess’ edited volume moves beyond the familiar story of Mormons as political outsiders and gives voice to diverse political discourses.  Structured chronologically, Mormonism and American Politics is bookended by Joseph Smith’s 1844 campaign for president and an analysis of Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. The pages within highlight the protean history of Mormon isolation and participation in national politics and American exceptionalism, the politics of polygamy, Mormon race relations, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ stalwart participation in the twentieth-century Republican Party.

The volume offers concise examples of Mormonism’s distinct and extensive participation in American politics. It complicates a narrative of gradual assimilation and the increasingly common project of comparing Mormon history with that of American Catholicism. One of the most compelling chapters, “On the ‘Underground’: What the Mormon ‘Yes on 8’ Campaign Reveals About the Future of Mormons in American Political Life,” by Joanna Brooks, highlights the internal conflicts of supporting anti-LGBT legislation and the distinctive theological stance of Mormon support for California’s Proposition 8.

Although Mormon women may not have historically played a strong public role in American politics, their absence from the volume is apparent. A strong chapter by Jana Riess looks at the nineteenth-century Cult of True Womanhood and Protestant women’s protest against Congressman-elect and polygamist B. H. Roberts, but Claudia L. Bushman’s “Mormon Women Talk Politics,” is an odd amalgamation of songs and personal reflection, with little scholarly analysis.

As one might expect, Mormonism and American Politics spends a substantial amount of time considering the legacy and influence of George and Mitt Romney. “Like Father, Unlike Son: The Governor’s Romney, the Kennedy Paradigm, and the Mormon Question” by Randall Balmer and “Mitt, Mormonism and the Media: An Unfamiliar Faith Takes the Stage in the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election” by Peggy Fletcher Stack, add depth and breadth to the debate.

Of particular interest to this blog is the volume’s treatment of Mormonism not solely, or even primarily, as a religious anomaly of the American West, but an active participant in national politics and history. As Philip Barlow rightly notes, “The religion’s infancy was harbored in the nation’s adolescence; both took form together” (109). Well-researched, with short and concise chapters from a distinguished team of scholars, Mormonism and American Politics does not offer a definitive history, but begins the conversation in stride.

Religion in the American West Group at the AAR

We are excited about our upcoming gathering at the AAR in Atlanta! Our session is on Saturday, November 21, from 4:00 to 6:30pm in Hilton-307.

This year’s session is titled “Religious Promotion and Sacred Space in the American West.” The American West has long been known for innovative forms of religious self-promotion from the miracle-working snake oil salesman to the charismatic founders of new religious movements to the well-coiffed stage preacher. The four papers that make up this session explore how unique western spaces and sites have combined with religious self-promotion and self-definition to create new and often contested forms of religious practice.

As is the custom of the Group, all four papers will be pre-circulated, and presenters will give only short points of entry into their papers. This year, Prof. Sarah Pike of California State University, Chico, will respond to the papers before opening up the floor to lively Q & A. The papers will be available to AAR members by November 1 here. (https://www.aarweb.org/aar-full-paper-submission-program)

Presenters and their paper titles:

Jenna Gray-Hildenbrand, Middle Tennessee State University

“Religion, Fraud, and the American West: The ‘I AM’ Activity and Defining the Limits of Religious Freedom”

Justin Doran, University of Texas

“Bayou Revival: Houston as the Contact Zone between the New South and the American West”

Megan Goodwin, Bates College

“‘This Is Not About Religion’: The State of Texas v. Yearning For Zion”

Angela Tarango, Trinity University

Isaiah Ellis, University of North Carolina

“Hunting Buffalo in Oklahoma: Native American Casinos, Sacred Land, and Portrayals of of Native Culture and Religion”

We hope to see you all at the meeting and hope that you can stay for the business meeting afterward!

WHA Arrington-Prucha Prize

In recognition of the role played by Leonard Arrington and Father Francis Paul Prucha in Western American religious history, the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University funds this $500 cash prize for the best essay of the year on religious history in the West. The cash prize and a plaque are awarded to the author and a certificate is awarded to the publisher. No time period, geographic restrictions, or questions of religious persuasion apply. To be eligible, articles must have appeared in the prior year in a journal, magazine, or edited volume. Any WHA member, as well as the publisher or author of the essay, may nominate an essay. A copy of the journal, an offprint, or a photocopy must be submitted to each member of the award committee.

To be eligible for award in 2015, the article must have appeared in 2014. Deadline to submit to Awards Committee is April 1, 2015. 

More information at http://www.westernhistoryassociation.wildapricot.org/awards/articles&essays/arrington-prucha.

OAH Workshop: Diversity in the American West

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
January 5 - February 27, 2015

NEW 2015 SUMMER REGIONAL WORKSHOP
Glendale, California
July 17 - July 19, 2015

The Organization of American Historians is pleased to announce a Call for Proposals for its new Summer 2015 Regional Workshop.

The 3-day workshop, titled Diversity in the American West, will be held on the campus of Glendale Community College, located ten miles north of downtown Los Angeles, from Friday, July 17 through Sunday, July 19, 2015.

The Program Committee invites proposals from college faculty (from both two-year and four-year institutions); high school faculty, including AP History instructors; historical researchers and writers; librarians: museum curators; public historians; advanced graduate students; and other educational professionals.

The purpose of this workshop is to offer history educators a meaningful opportunity to learn more about the diverse people, places, and historical themes of the American West. Some questions to consider include the following: What are the major trends in contemporary research and historiography of the American West, particularly as they relate to the theme of diversity? What strategies can be used to engage students and the general public in the history of the American West? How might instructors build and enhance their teaching of American History survey courses to include the history of the American West?


Submissions will be accepted between January 5, 2015 and February 27, 2015.

For further information and submission instructions please click here.

The Papers Are Now Available!

The Religion in the American West Group will be kicking off its first AAR (American Academy of Religion) meeting as an official, permanent program unit with a selection of excellent papers by Rebecca Tatum, Sarah Koenig, Brennan Keegan, and Jason Allen Redden.

The theme for our session, which meets Sunday, November 23, from 9:00 to 11:30am, is “Western Borderlands: Families and Congregations.”

The session’s description is:

In the North American West, there are numerous sites of contact at geopolitical borders as well as at boundaries of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and religion. This session’s papers examine these points of contact and negotiation from two broad vantage points. The first has to do with the birth and care of children and religious understandings of bodies; papers consider the role of Native American wet nurses and New Mexican midwives. The second has to do with the spread of evangelical Christianity in unique Western settings; papers explore missions to indigenous groups in British Columbia and to mining towns in Montana. These papers show that domestic, commercial, and Christian spaces have intersected in the North American West in complex and creative ways.

Following our tradition, the papers are pre-circulated and are available now for you to read carefully. Presenters will give only short introductions to their papers so as to leave ample time for comment and discussion. The official respondent this time around is Professor Colleen McDannell of the University of Utah.

To access the papers, follow these steps:

1.      Join the AAR if you have not done so already. Access to the papers is limited to AAR members.

2.      Go to this website: https://www.aarweb.org/aar-full-paper-submission-pilot-program and scroll done to our session.

3.      Click on the paper titles to read the papers.

4.      Come on Sunday, November 23, with your questions and comments!

We look forward to seeing everyone in San Diego!

Better Know an Archive: UCSB’s American Religions Collection

by Dusty Hoesly

This summer marks the 50^th anniversary of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). It is one of the oldest such departments at a secular university in the United States, established one year after the Supreme Court’s Abington v. Schempp decision allowed teaching about religion (but not proselytizing) in public schools, and it has been a leader in the field ever since. Well-known faculty specializing in American religions have included Robert Michaelsen, Thomas O’Dea, Phillip Hammond, Ines Talamantez, Catherine Albanese, Wade Clark Roof, Charles Long, Rudy Busto, Ann Taves, and Kathleen M. Moore.

UCSB also maintains one of the finest collections in the world of archival and documentary materials on new religious movements and “alternative” religions. The cornerstone of the library’s Department of Special Collections is the American Religions Collection (ARC), mainly comprised of materials assembled by J. Gordon Melton for his Encyclopedia of American Religions, first published in 1978 and now in its 8^th edition. The ARC contains thousands of books and serials, and almost 1,000 linear feet of manuscripts relating to 20^th century sects and newer religions, such as Hare Krishnas, the Unification Church, Scientology, the Church of God, New Age groups, Asian religions in the U.S., and mail-order religions. Melton’s manuscript files, containing correspondence, newsletters, flyers, articles, clippings, and ephemera relating to hundreds of such groups, make up the bulk of the collection. Like his Encyclopedia, materials are organized by “families” of religious traditions.

In addition to the ARC manuscript files, some of the other holdings within the ARC include:

·         Bromley Papers: legal case files compiled by scholar David Bromley relating to est, ISKCON, Unification Church, and The Way International, among others.

·         Burnell Collection: materials by Los Angeles-area New Thought leaders George and Mary Burnell.

·         Chicagoland Psychic Archives (1964-1985): materials relating to practitioners of paranormal phenomena in the Chicago area, such as psychics, astrologers, mediums, ghosthunters, and devotees of the occult, UFOs, and parapsychology.

·         Clifton Collection: files about pagan, witchcraft, and occult subjects.

·         Cult Awareness Network (CAN) Collection: files on hundreds of religious groups, as well as internal administrative files of the former cult watchdog group.

·         Hadden Papers: files collected by scholar Jeffrey K. Hadden about evangelical groups and leaders such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Jim Bakker.

·         Russell Chandler Collection: files from the 1960s-1980s collected when Chandler was a religion writer for the Los Angeles Times.

·         Santa Barbara Parapsychology Collection: materials related to parapsychology groups in central coastal and southern California.

Other sub-collections include materials about Ramtha, Estreletta, Worldwide Church of God, World Prophetic Ministry, Children of God, Old Catholics, Krishnamurti, ISKCON, Unification Church, Soka Gakkai International, Goddians, Christian Science, Unity School of Christianity, Swedenborgianism, Foundation for Christian Living, Brotherhood of the White Temple, Process Church of the Final Judgment, and Christian anti-Communism.

If you are looking for a complete run of FATE magazine or a complete set of Jack Chick books, the ARC has them both. Metaphysical serials include Hypnosis Quarterly, Health Alternatives Newsletter, Parapsychology Bulletin, Pagan Dawn, Eck News, and Astrologers’ Almanac, to name just a few. Aside from non-traditional religions and spiritualities, there are periodicals and other materials on a range of Christian sectarian groups, including Pentecostalism, Adventism, and various stripes of Evangelicalism, as well as Asian, African, and Native American religions, plus many more.

Beyond the ARC, the Special Collections department contains other resources useful for studying religion in the American West. For example, the Humanistic Psychology Archives encompasses manuscripts about “spiritual psychology” and related topics, and the J. F. Rowny Press Records collection contains materials from the Santa Barbara-based J. F. Rowny Press, which published metaphysical works. The Ricardo Cruz Catolicos por la Raza Papers (1967-1993) includes correspondence, legal documents, transcripts, and ephemera of Cruz, a Chicano rights attorney and founder of the controversial Católicos por la Raza, which demonstrated against the Catholic Church for its neglect of the Latino community.

Best of all, the library staff is always helpful and courteous, making research in the Special Collections a joy. Curator and archivist David Gartrell, in particular, can locate anything you are looking for quickly, typically offering relevant suggestions about other files which may aid in your research. In my experience, he will even sit with you and comb through manuscripts or serials looking for that one piece you are searching for. One time, he spent twenty minutes with me flipping through the classified ads in the back pages of FATE magazine for a particular advertisement.

In this brief and rather arbitrary look at the ARC and the UCSB Special Collections department’s holdings, I have focused more on the “alternative” and “new” religious movements which gained steam in the 1960s rather than “traditional” or “establishment” religions. I do this primarily because it reflects much of J. Gordon Melton’s collection as well as his scholarship, both of which are the core of the ARC. However, California should not only be seen as a place for “weird” religions, immigrant religions, and religious innovation. It is also a place of mainstream religions, nativism, and religious conservatism. Happily, the ARC contains materials on all of the above and more besides. Next time you’re visiting the American Riviera, stop by, introduce yourself, and surf through UCSB’s Special Collections and especially the American Religions Collection. Scholarly—or other—enlightenment awaits.

“Religion and Empire” as a Theme for Teaching American Religions

by John-Charles Duffy

I’m in the process of reframing my “intro to American religions” course for this coming fall. I teach this course as a historical survey. For the past couple of years, the course’s organizing narrative has had two strands, intertwined like DNA: one story about the consolidation and erosion of Protestant dominance in American society, and another story about the expansion of religious diversity in the U.S. through immigration.

This fall, I’ll be attempting a single organizing narrative, unified by the theme “religion and empire.” By “empire” I have in mind American territorial expansion and the United States’ rise to political and economic superpower status. This experiment grows out of a conversation I had at the AAR this past November with Brandi Denison. By reframing American history as a history of empire—from the Mississippians and the Aztecs to U.S. neocolonialism and globalization—I hope to give the course a stronger transnational orientation, with attention not only to the flow of religions into U.S. borders but also to the flow of American religions and their influence out across the globe.

One side effect of this focus on empire is a shifting of the story’s center of gravity westward, away from the eastern seaboard. I already make a point, as I suspect all of us do by now, of starting the story of European contact with the Spanish and the French rather than the English. The theme of empire reinforces that move, plus now I’ll be including Russian colonization in Alaska and California. Manifest Destiny will loom large in the new course, which will ensure that Native Americans recur in the historical narrative rather than fading into obscurity after the initial European contacts. Manifest Destiny will also bring Hispanic Americans into the course earlier—in the course as I’ve been teaching it up to now, they don’t appear until the unit on post-1960s pluralism. Mormons will figure in the new course as an obstacle to American empire in the trans-Mississippi west; Confucians, Buddhists, and Sikhs help build that empire’s infrastructure and economy. I’ll be adding to the course a focus on Christian civilization-building in the United States’ Pacific possessions. Our readings will likely include McKinley’s account of how God inspired him to take charge of the Philippines.

Some topics that are typical fare in “intro to American religions” courses will probably drop out of my new course because they don’t tie in well to the theme of empire. The First Great Awakening will definitely go. The Second Great Awakening might survive the cut because of its connection to American expansion west across the Appalachians, but at that point in the historical narrative I’ll be more interested in Native American revitalization movements. The fundamentalist-modernist controversy is out, though we’ll discuss the conservative-liberal split within Protestantism in connection with colonialism, missions, and interreligious dialogue. The day I currently spend on JFK’s speech in Houston will need to go—the speech is an important turning point in a story about eroding Protestant dominance, but it isn’t pertinent to a story about imperialism. (If JFK gets mentioned in the new narrative, it will be for his contributions to the Cold War.) The black civil rights movement will still appear in the new syllabus, to follow up on the legal and social status of America’s former slaves. I currently do a day on American Muslims negotiating life in the U.S.; in the new course, I need to do more on Islamism as a reaction to American neocolonialism.

Again, in choosing “religion and empire” as the course’s guiding theme, my pedagogical aims are broader than highlighting religion in the American west—but I’m pleased that the theme facilitates that focus as well. 

CALL FOR PAPERS: Religion and the American West Group at the American Academy of Religion (AAR)

AAR Annual Meeting
San Diego, CA
November 22-25, 2014

Religion in the American West Group

Statement of Purpose:

The Religion in the American West Group is a forum for graduate students, independent scholars, and faculty who situate their work regionally in the North American West, broadly conceived. The study of religion in this region allows scholars to use a broad array of methodologies (historical, anthropological, literary, sociological, and others) to explore the most pressing questions in the field of American religion and in Religious Studies more generally. These include, but are not limited to: the history of empire and colonialism; the connections between religion and violence; the construction and deployment of racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual identities; transnational movement of people and ideas; religion and the natural and built environments; myth-making and its role in the construction and critique of nationalist ideologies; and the development of the category of religion. The purpose of this subfield is not to remain in the American West, to define the West, or to argue that religion in the West is unique. Instead, by situating scholarship regionally, scholars of the American West are able to develop theories and methods that can be useful interpretive lenses for other regions defined by land, transnationalism, migrations, diversity, and colonialism. Moreover, the Group supports the development of a rigorous intellectual community by pre-circulating papers in advance of the national meeting and maintaining a blog.

Call for Papers:
Proposals for individual papers or a full session are solicited on the following topics:

• Drawing on the meeting’s location in San Diego, we invite proposals that touch on the the notion of boundaries in the North American West. In addition to considerations of the U.S.-Mexico border, we encourage submissions that highlight how religion in the region has facilitated and/or constrained crossing boundaries of ethnicity, race, socioeconomic class, language, gender, sexual orientation, aesthetics, and other constructions of difference.

• Religion and natural resources. We solicit proposals that examine how religion influences and is influenced by the intersection of environmental resources and limitations and human needs in the American West. Possible themes include but are not limited to water usage, urbanization, local environments, agriculture, land ownership, and tourism.

The deadline for proposal submission is
Monday, March 3, 5:00 PM EST

Method: PAPERS

Process: Proposals are anonymous to chairs and steering committee members until after final acceptance/rejection

Leadership:

Chairs
Brandi Denison, b.denison@unf.edu
Brett Hendrickson, hendribr@lafayette.edu

Steering Committee
John-Charles Duffy, duffyjc@muohio.edu
Kathleen Holscher, kathleen.holscher@unm.edu
Sarah M. Pike, spike@csuchico.edu
Thomas Bremer, bremert@rhodes.edu

link to CFP at AAR site:
http://papers.aarweb.org/content/religion-american-west-group

CFP: Religion in California conference

Editor's note: This call for papers may be of interest to many of you:

Religion in California

April 24-25, 2014

University of California, Berkeley

Call for Papers

We invite proposals for a symposium on “Religion in California” to be held at the University of California, Berkeley, in April 2014. The symposium is co-sponsored by Berkeley’s Religion, Politics, and Globalization Program (RPGP), the California American Studies Association (CASA), the Theological Engagement with California’s Culture Project (TECC), the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion (BCSR), and Graduate Theological Union.

The symposium will feature a keynote discussion with Dr. Matthew Avery Sutton (author of Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America), Dr. Lois A. Lorentzen (co-editor of On the Corner of Bliss and Nirvana) and Rev. Dr. Joy Moore (Associate Dean of African American Church Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary).

We invite individual proposals that deal with any aspect of religion in California, but we are particularly interested in works that interact with the path breaking scholarship of Sutton and Lorentzen et. al. and/or theological features within the state. Proposals that focus upon some combination of immigration and movement, politics and social movements, and/or theology and culture will be preferred. Proposals should range from 250 to 1,000 words and will be considered through December 15, 2013. Selected participants will be notified by January 1, 2014.

The symposium will be relatively small with panels held on Friday, April 25. Participants will be expected to attend several selected panels and also participate in the opening keynote discussion on Thursday, April 24 and the closing conversation on Friday, April 25.

Please direct any questions and submit proposals to: Lynne Gerber (l.gerber@berkeley.edu), Edward J. Blum (eblum@mail.sdsu.edu), and/or Jason Sexton (Jason@teccproject.com).

http://www.isa-rc22.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/RIC-cfp-poster.pdf

RIC-cfp-poster.pdf

Teaching Religion in the West

By Joshua Paddison

These past three spring semesters, I've had the good fortune to teach an upper-division course on Religion in the Nineteenth-Century American West for Indiana University's Religious Studies department. Having just finished up the third iteration of the course, I thought I would share some of my reflections on teaching western religious history.

As I tinkered and experimented with the course, I moved toward an approach in which students helped to set our agenda. After reading several "foundational" articles on western history, religion in the west, and religious change among Native Americans, I asked the students to help me generate a list of "big questions" with which we would grapple. These would be the questions we would return to throughout the semester; they were also integral to our midterm and final exam format. Here is our list from spring 2013 (I wrote the first six; students generated the others based on their interests):

BIG QUESTIONS

1. Did religious tolerance flourish in the "wide open spaces" of the West?

2. How did the natural environment shape religion in the West? How did religion shape the natural environment?

3. How did the religious legacies of the pre-American history of the west (Native American, Spanish, Mexican, British) affect the American period?

4. How and why did Native American and/or Asian American “converts” practice, appropriate, adopt, and adapt Christianity?

5. How does studying religion in the west reframe and reorient our understanding of “American” religious history?

6. Why are people religious?

7. Is there such a thing as a “western” religion? (i.e., do religions in the west have especially “western” characteristics?)

8. Why has there been so much religious innovation in the west?

9. Why have there been so many new religious movements in the west?

10. How has religion in the west shaped and been shaped by U.S. national identity?

11. How did westerners use religion to cope with social/political/economic change?

12. How did American Christianity change in going west?

13. How did manifest destiny shape people’s daily religious practice?

14. Did Native Americans imagine themselves from an internationalist/colonialist perspective?

As you can see, these questions include both historical concerns as well as more theoretical. My approach to the course was mainly historical -- we read books and articles by historians as well as primary sources from the period -- but studying religion in the west proved to be an excellent way to grapple with larger theoretical questions regarding the nature of religion, the meanings of “conversion,” how and why religions change over time and space, and how religion is interrelated with other social forces, especially race, gender, sexuality, and nationalism. In the nineteenth-century West, patterns of religious encounter, conflict, accommodation, and exchange played out in especially intensified form, making it a particularly useful place to consider how religions are constantly being made and remade, blending, mixing, and fusing in specific local contexts and in relation to larger structural forces and power dynamics.

After our foundational readings, I divided the course into five thematic units: Manifest Destiny, Violence (in which we compared the Whitman "massacre" of 1847, the Minnesota War of 1862, and the 1890 Ghost Dance), Mormonism, U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, and Immigrants (specifically Chinese and Irish Catholic). I strove for chronological as well as geographical coverage, though I never did include Alaska or Hawai'i, regrettably. Hawai'i in particular would have opened up a fascinating set of issues.

One of the surprises of the course, for me as the instructor, was the extent to which anti-Catholicism spanned virtually every topic we learned about, from Lyman Beecher's "Plea for the West" to the ways the Whitmans' deaths were interpreted, from the dynamics of the U.S.-Mexico War to the ways Chinese Buddhists were represented by Protestants. It leaves me convinced that Protestant-Catholic tensions, though discussed, are not emphasized enough by scholars of western religious history.

Toward the end of each semester, I conducted a “history lab” where students worked in groups with primary sources related to a conflict between a Methodist minister-agent and a Catholic priest on an Indian reservation in the 1870s, drawn from my own research. The primary sources, which include depositions, newspaper accounts, and transcriptions of meetings with Indian leaders, directly contradict one another, forcing the students to think carefully about the limits and reliability of each source. I asked each group to produce a timeline of events; we then compare the timelines produced by the groups to explore how historical narratives are constructed. Finally, I gave them an excerpt from my book that makes use of these sources and I talked with them about how and why I crafted the narrative and analysis as I did. This activity helped students to learn the material but also to approach historical texts with greater rigor and to get a sense of the nuts-and-bolts of how historians create narratives and make arguments.

The primary challenge of teaching a course like this is that, at least in the midwest, students do not enter the classroom having had much exposure to the basics of western history, let alone western religious history. Over time I've moved more toward giving mini-lectures to help them get up to speed about the "facts" so we can discuss readings with more sophistication.

On the final day of class this past semester, we were discussing our "big questions" and it was laid bare that, while students could think of plenty of examples of conflict, war, intolerance, and oppression, they were hard pressed to come up with examples of cooperation, collaboration, and tolerance. This made me wonder: to what extent is that a result of my own preoccupations, personality, and politics? Could a course on religion in the nineteenth-century American West be constructed that emphasized -- or at least included -- happier moments, even if fleeting? What would those moments be? And if we, as historians, have to search hard to find them, should we bother to do so? I honestly don't know, but it is causing me to think about whether I'm over-utilizing a conflict model in my teaching.

You can take a look at a version of my full syllabus here, as presented in IUPUI's Young Scholars of American Religion program. Next week, I will be presenting students' perspectives on what they found valuable in the course.

Casual Friday: Redd Center Grants

For those of you doing field research or archival research on (American) Western topic that requires travel and find yourself in needs of some funds (which means all of us!), the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, centered at Brigham Young University, offers a number of grants for students, faculty, and independent researchers. Here is a list of the awards they offer. Applications for awards will be available beginning Monday January 14. Here is the link: https://reddcenter.byu.edu/Pages/GrantsAwards.aspx

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.

Call for Contributors: RAW enters a new phase

by the Editors

Five years ago the Religion in the American West Seminar at the American Academy of Religion was created. Since seminars at the AAR run as five-year non-renewable terms, the RAW Seminar at the AAR came to a close last week with its final meeting occurring at the AAR annual conference in Chicago (for a list of presenters see here). As we noted previously, we have proposed the creation of a Religion in the American West Group, which would allow us to continue meeting for the next five years with the option of renewing (for info on AAR program unit types, click here). We will keep you updated as that effort develops. In the meantime, the blog continues!

In the midst of these changes, the Religion in the American West blog enters a new phase. Thus, it seems appropriate to issue a call for new and continuing contributors. If you have contributed to the blog in the past, please continue to do so! If have not contributed in the past but you do research and writing on religion in the American West (or would like to), please contact us (relamwest@gmail.com)—we welcome your contributions! In particular, we would like to hear from you if you have presented in the past as part of the RAW Seminar at AAR, or if you would like to be a part of the RAW Group in the future. But we welcome anyone who would like to propose a topic and contribute a post. Are you writing on a topic relevant to the American West—thesis, dissertation, article, book project—and want to test out an idea, get some feedback? Try posting it to the blog! Did you come across an interesting primary document during your last trip to the archives and want to share it? Please do. Read a good book recently and want to write a review? The blog's a great place for reviews. Interesting field experiences? Please tell us about it. Saw something while travelling through Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Washington, British Columbia, Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico—even California!, etc.—and snapped a photo? Please send it in for our Casual Friday posts, where you don't have to have a fully developed idea or post to go along with it! We welcome your reflections on any aspect of religion in the American West(s)—and the study thereof!

Got something to contribute? Have a query? Suggestion? Comments? Send them to us at relamwest@gmail.com

or comment below!

We hope to hear from you soon!