The West as a de-centering strategy for American religious history

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. 

Book of the Month

Jennifer Nez Denetdale. Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita. Tucson: The University Press of Arizona,2007.

Review by Stan Thayne

Recognition of the value and place of oral traditions in understanding how Navajos perceive their past, how narratives are used to shape their perceptions of the past and their own experiences, and how they convey beliefs and values from ancestors enlarges the historical scope to include those people conventional western history has ignored and excluded. (9-10)

Jennifer Nez Denetdale's stated goal in this work is to counter the colonizing forces of past scholarship, historical and anthropological, done primarily by non-Navajo scholars, by providing a work based in Navajo ways of knowing the past. "Until fairly recently," Denetdale states, "the Navajo past has been largely studied, classified, and written by non-Navajos with reliance on Western categories of historical production for meaning. These renditions of the Diné past have not adequately represented our own perspectives of the past." As, apparently, "the first-ever Diné/Navajo to earn a Ph.D. in history," as her faculty page at the University of New Mexico states, Professor Denetdale sets out to do just this by placing Navajo oral narratives at the heart of her study. But she begins by dismantling some of the distorting tendencies of past scholarship to portray the Diné people as recent newcomers to the American West (as anthropologists have tended to emphasize) or as an aggressive nomadic people who needed subjugating in order to stabilize the region, as historians have often portrayed the Navajo. Both of these views, historical and anthropological, Denetdale explains, have served Euro-American interests by justifying federal displacements, policies, and treatment of Diné people, and by confirming Euro-American understandings of Navajos and Native American peoples. 

At the center of the story, and stories, Denetdale tells is the life of former Navajo chief Manuelito and his wife Juanita, Denetdale's great-great-great grandparents. Past written accounts of Chief Manuelito's life, based primarily on accounts recorded in Spanish, Mexican, and American sources, have tended to diminish any recognition of the role Juanita played in the past of the Diné people, rendering her, with all other Navajo women, virtually invisible (within this historiographical tradition—in contrast to Navajo narratives, where they have remained central). Navajo women have remained visible in the Western archive, when they have, primarily through photographs, which is one of the sources Denetdale creatively utilizes—focusing particularly on the way returning these photographs to Diné communities has rejuvenated traditions of story-telling centered around matrilineal clan-based organization. One of the major goals of this work is to re-center Navajo women in representations of the Diné past and present. Clan-based oral traditions about Juanita's life, Denetdale states, "reveal the centrality of women’s roles in Navajo society and illustrate how oral tradition is used to organize social units, connect Navajos to the land, and interpret life experiences and the past" (16).

Navajo creation narratives figure prominently in this work. "Drawing upon a body of studies that interrogates the relationship between 'oral tradition' and 'history,'" Denetdale writes, "I propose that traditional Navajo perspectives on the past are grounded in the creation narratives that contain within them Diné beliefs and values" (7). One of the particularly interesting ways she does this is by demonstrating how narratives told by Diné elders about their grandparents, and in particular about Juanita, "mirror the creation stories in form and motifs" (139). In a particularly enlightening moment in the text she demonstrates how the elders' narratives about their ancestors' return to Navajo Land (Dinétah) from Fort Sumner, where they were held as prisoners from 1863-68, are told in ways that mirror the shape and form of traditional Diné creation stories, and these narratives, told again and again, renew and re-cement Navajo connections to, and claims on, the land of their ancestors (140, 144). "The fact that my grandparents' and my mother's generation retain connections to lands where their ancestors once lived, in spite of these dislocations," Denetdale concludes, "attests to the enduring relationships created and recreated through narratives, narratives that link us as Navajos to the land" (161). And from the fragments of her ancestors' lives, which she collected through her elders' stories, "new stories are woven," continuing the tradition (161).

Based on narratives Denetdale collected primarily from her own relatives, this is a very personal work, which is something Denetdale is very upfront about. "As a Diné scholar, I follow the paths of other Native scholars who have begun the process of remapping and reclaiming our territory, geographical and cultural" (10). Telling stories of her own people, from their perspective, Denetdale states—drawing from critical studies by other Indigenous scholars such as Haunani-Kay Trask and Linda Tuhiwai Smith and scholars such as Edward Said—is one way that Indigenous and colonized peoples can resist and counter the forces of colonizing discourses by asserting their own traditions, their own ways of knowing, and their own claims to the land.

Casual Friday: New article by Quincy Newell!

Quincy Newell has published a new article in the most recent issue of the online journal Religion Compass, titled: "Religion and the American West." She identifies four areas of interest for scholars of the American West and the challenges that we face. This is an excellent overview of the field and provides a framework for future scholarship. For those of you preparing your PhD comps list, it should be at the top of your list.

On another note, we are sad to announce that Quincy has handed over her co-editor status of the blog. She worked hard throughout the year to bring new contributors on board, to increase our readership, and ensure that we continued to bring you interesting and relevant blog posts. We'll miss her and we wish her the best of luck for her future endeavors! (And hope that she'll continue to write blog posts once in a while!)

We're Here. Get Used to It.

by Brett Hendrickson

The semester is ending, but I’m still ruminating on so much of the delicious material presented at this year’s AAR meeting in San Francisco. (Did it seem to you that the respondents this year were terrific?) Of course, one of the best panels was our very own Religion in the American West Seminar, which featured fine scholarship, poised thinkers, another spell-binding respondent (click here to read Greg Johnson's response), and a hearty discussion. In this post, I want to reflect a little on a portion of that discussion.

At one point in part of the back-and-forth after the papers (which can be found by following these instructions), a first-time attendee to the Seminar asked something like, “Yeah, but how is it that religion in the American West is a stand-alone topic?” Inwardly, I groaned. Not that it’s not an interesting question—it is—but we have discussed it several times now at the AAR and other venues. It’s just that the discussion in San Francisco had been going so swimmingly, with no existential angst, that I thought perhaps we had reached a moment of self-acceptance wherein we could assume a defensible raison d'être and move forward. But then the question resurfaced. And again this year, I heard many good points defending attentiveness to region in the study of American religion, but when I saw the questioner outside later, she confessed that she remained unconvinced.
So, as an exercise of self-definition, and as a plea that we accept our own basic existence, I offer the following points arguing for the area of study we have named “religion in the American West.” (Since this is a blogpost, not a researched article, I suggest and summarize rather than prove.)

1. Historiography. We have noted a great lacuna in other scholarly literature about the West around the subject of religion. Somehow, others have mostly found a way to tell the story of this region of the world without fully integrating the religious motivations and practices of the people in it. When religion is mentioned, it is dropped in like a quick and mandatory visit to church.

2. Land. We have made the point repeatedly that the mountains, the deserts, the Pacific world, and much of the rest of the western landscape are unique both in scale (big) and in the American imagination. Moreover, the amount of publicly-owned land is comparably much greater in the West, and the national park system originated and still has its largest examples in the region. The connection between religion and this unique land deserves more attention.

3. Native Americans. While indigenous people live in all parts of the American continents, the largest American Indian nations are in the West as are the largest reservations and other populations of Native people. In broad brushstrokes, it is fair to say that the study of living Native American religions and worldviews has been vital in the American West as has been the development of Native American religious rights.

4. Mormons. Sure, they began in New York, but the LDS Church and the American West are utterly entangled. As Greg Johnson confirmed, the Mormons are a real gift to those who study American religions, and it is a special treat that they are headquartered in Utah.

5. Spain and Mexico. Most of the American West was once part of a non-British European Empire (Spain). Later, most of the region was part of another liberal western nation-state (Mexico). Hence, most of the American West, rather than being a colony that threw off its master, is part of our very own American colonial expansion. The West is one of the clearest results of our nation’s own imperial pretensions. As any religions scholar can tell you, empire and religion go together.

6. The Pacific World and Asian Immigration. The western United States is a part of the Pacific Rim and has historically received many immigrants from Asian nations. As a consequence, there is a long and varied history of Asian religions in the region.

7. The Frontier. It goes without saying that “the frontier” as an interpretive category is contested. But the frontier, whatever it is, is intricately connected to religious expansion and expression in the United States.

8. Women. Universal suffrage first surfaced in Wyoming in the mid-nineteenth century, and several other western states gave women the right to vote earlier than the rest of the nation. Women have been important in the missions movement, in various metaphysical groups throughout the region, and in other roles of religious leadership.

9. Pentecostalism. Now a global religious juggernaut, Pentecostalism really got going in Los Angeles. Is it a coincidence that global communication networks and media production also grew to maturity in L.A.?

Finally, as Greg Johnson also helpfully added in San Francisco, it is not necessary that “religion in the American West” be some sort of Platonic form of utter uniqueness. It merely needs to be a fruitful referent for comparative study. It passes that test with flying colors. (Let’s not forget that the AAR has all kinds of sessions that boggle the mind in their specificity. I mean, how much is there really left to say about Schleiermacher?) The existence of this Seminar is proof enough that this is a worthwhile and justifiable endeavor.

How would you add to this list? How would you nuance these suggestions?

Wallace Stegner and the (Lack of) Religion in the American West

by Brett Hendrickson

A close friend of mine is a Presbyterian minister. At her church, she leads a book club that reads novels with an eye for religious themes. Not given to twee “Christian fiction,” they read a variety of books that you would find in the Fiction & Literature section of your local bookstore. Nevertheless, my minister friend reports that it often takes some prodding for her parishioners to imagine the religiosity of the fictional characters if these are not engaged in explicit institutional acts such as church attendance, private prayer, or overt devotion.

I suppose she would be frustrated with me as I troll through Wallace Stegner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Angle of Repose, all the while searching for mention of religious life in the American West. Angle of Repose, published in 1971, would be a joy for any reader, but it is a special treat for academic historians. The narrator, Lyman Ward, is himself a retired professor of history, and the novel is his account of the lives of his grandparents, Oliver and Susan Ward, who move to various points in the West in the late 1800s. There’s a lot of great material here: Mexican and Chinese laborers, mining boomtowns, Eastern capitalists, incredible and raw nature, and an over-riding mania (on the part of Oliver Ward) to endow the West with a vital, new civilization. What there isn’t is any indication whatsoever of religion. On page 471 of my edition, a couple characters finally see the inside of a chapel, but this is at a blue-blooded New Hampshire boys school to which the Wards have sent their eldest son to study “with the finest teachers, among the finest Eastern boys.” But that’s it. Church in this new West is, at best, a part of fine Eastern culture, sedentary, rarefied, and unsuited for the mountains and valleys of Idaho or California.

Well, ok. Not every author, even very good and influential ones like Stegner, is required to make his or her characters’ religious practices and tendencies available to the reader. And Stegner does share (with remarkable tenderness) the ways in which his characters make meaning out of their lives in the West. They forge relationships with people of different classes and races with whom they would have little interaction in the East, they regard the superlative landscapes around them with awe and industry, and they develop habits that include meditative solitude, so far away from the salons and hubbub of New England. But no praying. No preachments of salvation. No baptism for the babies born in the cabins.

Jackson J. Benson, Stegner’s biographer, wrote a critical introduction to Angle of Repose, in which he states that, “Like The Great Gatsby, [this book] helps us define who we, as a people in this new land, are.” Benson is surely correct—an important image of the West is a place of opportunity that really has no more need for the stuffy and scripted liturgies of Eastern culture, let alone the liturgies of the Church. This image, for all its impact, is misleading and insufficient.

First, there are stuffy churches in the West. But let’s let this be for a minute and say that the West is not as prone to denominational Christianity as other parts of the country. Then what is there? What does “Religion in the American West” refer to? Stegner seemed to have a difficult time imagining compelling answers to this question. A happy condition of our redoubled efforts to study religion in the West is that revisionist narratives of American religious history are not revisionist here. There are no Puritans to gum up the first four chapters of our books. There is no Robert Baird or Philip Schaff to blinker our researches. Like Stegner’s seekers of opportunity, we have something new to reveal.