Florida: An Honorary Western State?

by Brandi Denison

This month marks my one-year anniversary of being a Florida resident. In honor of this anniversary and the Republican convention in Tampa, please allow me to indulge an idea that has been brewing since I moved. Since moving to the Sunshine State, I have been gradually piecing together of my new state’s history and I have been struck by the similarities Florida shares with the American West. Allow me to walk you through my cocktail party argument (which, like most cocktail party arguments, is by no means thoroughly vetted—feel free to vet in the comment section).

Via The Last Refuge

1) Florida, like the Trans-Mississippi region, has a lengthy, but largely ignored religious history.

I’m not just talking about the Spanish. (Although St. Augustine, established by the Spanish in 1565, is the oldest continuously occupied European city in North America. It served the dual function as a military fort and the base of missionary operations.)

Via Suncycler

In addition to the Spanish Catholic missions, Florida was the site of the first Protestant religious service in North America. In 1562, Jean Ribault led an expedition of persecuted French Huguenots to North Florida. They founded Fort Caroline, which eventually grew into Jacksonville. This was a short-lived colony. In 1565, the Spanish killed Ribault and most of the colonists. This brief history might signal its absence in many narratives of American religious history, but Florida, like the West, undermines the traditional Puritan-based narrative of American religious history.

2) Like many places in the West, Florida boasts a harsh environment.

Via Medical Reserve Corps of Sarasota County

Admittedly, this might be my weakest argument. During the two tropical storms that hit in May and June, we received nearly 15 inches of rain in one week. My hometown of Grand Junction, Colorado doesn’t receive that much rain in one year. Nevertheless, like Westerners, Floridians are persistently aware of the land and its weather patterns. Instead of snow, drought, and wildfires, wind, tornados, and water batter resilient Floridians. While many people have been victims of hurricanes, tropical depressions, and tropical storms, it seems to me that there is a feeling of bravado for having lived through one. (I felt myself falling victim to this, as I was thinking, “15 inches, that’s all you’ve got, Mother Nature?”) This is not unlike the stories of blizzards I grew up hearing from old-timers, or even from one of Annie Proulx’s Wyoming short stories found in Fine Just the Way it Is.

3) Like the West, the arrival of the railroad transformed Florida’s landscape and population.

This point reminds Western scholars that the expansion of the railroad in the nineteenth century was not just a Western project, but a southern one as well. Florida’s railroad hero was Henry Flagler, a business partner of John D. Rockefeller. When he moved to Florida for his wife’s health in 1878, he was charmed by St. Augustine’s tourism potential. Lacking transportation and accommodations, Flagler did what any nineteenth-century oil tycoon would—he built his own railroad and hotel.

Via My Life in Postcards

The railroad was central to Florida’s population increase. In 1880, when Flagler was still planning the railroad, the population was around 250,000 people. By 1910, when he completed the construction of the railroad to Key West, the population had tripled to 750,000 people.

Additionally, like the West, Flagler saw Florida as a gateway to greater trade relationships. Instead of Asia, Florida was the entry point to Latin America, Cuba, and the newly opened Panama Canal. Like the West, it was a land to be traversed for capital gain.

Finally, because of the railroad, business investors began to see Florida as a tourist site and as a place for new settlements. These investors started using booster campaigns to attract new residents, promising paradise. Many people came, but, like many immigrants to the West, they were disappointed to not find immediate paradise.

4) Like the West, Florida has been subject to intense boom and bust cycles over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

In 2007, when the rest of the country was still high on climbing housing prices, the Florida housing market tanked. The Florida housing market was the canary in the coalmine. When NPR’s Planet Money purchased and traced one of those “toxic assets,” they discovered that the majority of the mortgages were in Florida.

Via jenks.net

This isn’t unusual for a state built on dreams. Flagler’s St. Augustine hotel never attracted the tourists he thought it would, and other entrepreneurs who attempted to attract tourists also ended up with empty luxury hotels. While Florida never had a mineral rush (with the expectation of a phosphate rush in the early 1900s), the boom-bust cycle of Florida fits the economic profile of many places in the American West. Its centrality in the economic downturn also signals that like the American West, Florida is not simply a peripheral state. It decides elections and directs the economy.

5) Like the West, Florida has inspired people to go on quests for mythical places, instilled the desire to create utopian communities, and is fertile soil for New Religious Movements.

The boom/bust cycle might be fueled on these dreams. Starting with Ponce de Leon’s quest for the Fountain of Youth, Florida, like the West, has inspired dreams of escape and perfection. Although I can’t recall specific movies, it seems to me that the fantasy of an idyllic orange grove in Florida is akin to the white-picket fence. To many people, Florida represents a place to get away from it all and to start anew. (Of course, as New West historians, we know that this is never possible, and Florida’s folly can be confirmed through Tim Dorsey’s novels.)

Via the Village Voice

This hasn’t stopped people from trying. I’ll skip right over Disney World and mention their master-planned community—Celebration, Florida. Celebration was built on the idea that it was possible to recreate the past of small-town America by making Disney’s Main Street come to life. I only need to remind you of Amy DeRogatis’s excellent book, Moral Geography, which traces the settlement of Ohio by descendents of Puritans who were finally going to get it right. Celebration was a chance for residents to finally achieve the American dream of the perfect community.

The Oratory at Ave Maria University, via Saint Peter's List

In addition to Celebration, there’s Ave Maria, Florida, which was the concept of Tom Monaghan, the conservative Catholic founder of Domino’s Pizza. Ave Maria initially attracted attention because Monaghan stated that the community would prohibit birth control, abortions, and other practices forbidden by Catholic clergy. There was a strong outcry, and Monaghan backed off. Today, Ave Maria is like any other Florida master-planned community with the exception of the Catholic university located in the center of the community. Yet, how many other Western communities were founded on the strict religious ideas of its founder, only to assimilate to the surrounding culture?

I could go on. There’s the Catholic New Religious Movement of Our Lady of Clearwater, the theme park of the Holy Land Experience, and the diversity of religious practices that comes with Cuban immigration. Like the entrepreneurs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, religious leaders have seen opportunity in Florida to establish communities set apart from the pace of modern life.

I’ll leave my extended points here, but I also would like to mention that like the West, Florida’s history has been defined by a history of immigration and racial, ethnic, and religious diversity. Additionally, like many Westerners, Floridians tend towards libertarian political ideas and general enmity towards the federal government (Governor Rick Scott’s refusal of federal funds linked to the ACA is a case in point). Like the West, Florida is a mixture of rural country (with many acres under federal control) and concentrated city centers. Finally, might Florida serve as St Louis did, as the entry point into the “final frontier?”

Ok, so this is just a fun little exercise. Florida is NOT the West in many ways—the fact that my crackers are always soggy is a constant reminder that I’m not in Colorado anymore. Nevertheless, I find it useful in thinking how a concentrated study of religion in the American West does not need to be regionally specific. Instead, the themes that emerge from a regionally-based study can help us to see the rest of American religious history (or even in points outside the US) in new light.

"Building Up What Needs to be Destroyed"

by Sara M. Patterson

One of my favorite comments from the Religion and the American West seminar at this year’s AAR—and, mind you, there were many comments worthy of quotation—was in response to a question posed by a first timer to the seminar: “What makes the West really distinct?”  In asking that question, our visitor tapped into the discussions that we’ve been having for the past four years: what really makes the West distinct?  The first response came from Greg Johnson, this year’s respondent.  He argued that the emphasis shouldn’t be on the really, rather that the West need only be sufficiently different to sustain interesting and on-going conversations.  A second response to the question came from Jim Bennett, co-chair of RAW.  He said that as a group we knew that our regionalism skirted on exceptionalism but that we still felt there was value to focusing our attention on religion in the American West: “We are building up what we know needs to be destroyed; we’re doing both simultaneously.”  I appreciated how well those comments seemed to epitomize much of what the seminar and its participants have tried to do.
   
Because all four of the papers presented can be found by following the instructions here, I will not attempt to summarize each author’s argument.  Rather, I will try to tease out several themes (or several manifestations of one theme) that I saw surface in this year’s discussion.  I hope that others will respond and explore the themes that stood out to them because this is in no way a comprehensive list. I am encouraged here by the comments given by Greg Johnson, whose response can be found here.  Johnson suggested that the panelists explore secondary order arguments that would promote comparison and cross-talk, while recognizing that comparisons in the past (and today) often function in a bullying fashion, forcing peoples and their spiritual identities into categories that they might not recognize themselves.  Nonetheless, Johnson argued for a cautious exploration of the larger relevance of each of the specific papers’ arguments.
   
The first theme that stood out to me was the role of “the West” in nation formation.  Several of our panelists noted that “the west” was not always geographically west of wherever the United States was, and yet “the West” was the space on which Americans played out their futuristic, often millennial, hopes for the nation.  As one participant noted, it was in the American imagination what America “ought to be.” This desire to create the ideal “American” (read also Protestant Christian) space, led to some very serious revisionist histories that “disappeared” indigenous peoples and wildernesses (and Muslims and animists in the Philippines), that flat out rejected whatever was deemed “non-Christian” (ie. Groups like Mormons), and re-read, in order to claim, certain histories (such as California’s Spanish, Catholic past).  All of these strategies were part and parcel of the formation of an idealized American identity.  Brandi Denison offered an important caution to our discussion of ‘disappearances,’ one later echoed by John-Charles Duffy: that in talking about disappearances and constructing these activities as the act of disappearing, we may well be participating in our own forms of romanticization.
   
The second theme that emerged in the papers was the theme of different groups—in these papers Mormons and Jews—claiming an American Indian past in order to foster a particular group identity.  This process stood out most clearly in Sarah Imhoff’s work which analyzed the reasons why supporters of the Galveston movement—a movement to place newly immigrated Jews in the American West—might be interested in the argument that Jews were somehow tied to American Indian ancestry, an argument that had been made since the colonial settlement of the Americas. 
   
The third theme that is intimately tied to the previous two was the way Catholics, Mormons and American Indians (particularly Utes, in our discussion), played a role in creating these visions of the past, present and future.  As Katherine Moran pointed out, Catholics played a key role in creating a romantic Catholic past in the pacific west, they were integral in portraying themselves as the predecessors of American Protestants.  In a similar vein, the Utes were not passive players in the creation of historical narratives that tied to the present day.  As an example Greg Johnson brought up the fact that the Utes currently own a tiny piece of the area surrounding Mesa Verde even though they have no blood connection to the ancient Pueblo who dwelt there.  Although there is no blood connection, the Utes have set up a hot dog stand where a tourist economy allows them the possibility of connecting with the esteemed and romanticized native past portrayed at Mesa Verde.
   
The final statement that caught my attention and may not be a ‘theme’ from the seminar this year, but is certainly worthy of note, was Johnson’s claim that Mormonism was “God’s gift to people who study religion.”  The argument behind this comment was simply that Mormon history is so rich and full of data about the founding of a new religious movement.  Johnson encouraged seminar participants to use their own approach to teaching Mormonism as a type of litmus test: If one can’t teach about Mormonism as a serious religious movement, then there “is something wrong with your methodology.”  I think this is an excellent reminder that I will use to end my comments about this year’s seminar. What stood out most to me was that we should be constantly questioning our methodologies while also continuing to explore, compare and make secondary-order arguments.  We should, indeed, continue the task of building up what we know needs to be destroyed.
  
Editors' note: Stay tuned for further conversation about our recent AAR session!  Did you go?  What did you think?  Leave your thoughts in the comments!  ALSO, coming up next week: Tisa Wenger kicks off our Book of the Month series with a review of Darren Dochuk's From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (W.W. Norton, 2010).

Religion in the American West Seminar Meeting

by Tisa Wenger

It was great to see so many people at our seminar session in Atlanta! We had four very interesting papers to discuss:

1.    Travis Ross, “California Imagined: The Pacific Expositor and the Religious Imagination”

2.    Jonathan Olson, “Not Merely Asiatic but Pagan: Religion, Chinese Exclusion, and the American West”

3.    Barry Alan Joyce, “Creating an Axis Mundi in the American Southwest: Religion, Science, and the Sacred at Chaco Culture National Historic Park”

4.    Brett Hendrickson, “Mexican-American Religious Healing and the American Spiritual Marketplace”

For anyone who wasn’t at the session and would like to read the papers, they are available to seminar members through the website’s members-only page (link in the blog sidebar). I gave a longer-than-it-should-have-been response to the session, which I thought I’d share in condensed form here on the blog. Reflecting on common themes that ran through some or all of these papers led us to a broader discussion about what key themes might distinguish “religion in the American west” and what contributions our work can offer the broader fields of U.S. western history, religious history, and religious studies more generally.

One common theme was the power of religious imagination to shape local and national identities. The first two papers focused on nineteenth-century Protestant public discourse. Ross gave us a close reading of a California Presbyterian newspaper to show how its writers developed a particular vision of Californian identity as they spoke to national debates around slavery, denominational vs. ecumenical efforts, and religious liberty. Olson showed us the power of religious discourse, and religious “othering,” to shape national political debates—in this case, how Protestant politicians in California deployed religious rhetoric to justify exclusionary legislation aimed at Asian immigrants at the end of the century.

The second set of papers examined tensions and points of convergence in more contemporary or perhaps “postmodern” contexts of religious hybridity and diversity. Joyce’s paper provided a finely layered discussion of competing religious narratives and practices laying claim to Casa Rinconada at Chaco Canyon, where National Park Service personnel attempt to negotiate compromises that honor strikingly different understandings of this space put forth by Pueblo Indians, Navajos, and New Age practitioners. Should New Age uses of the space be prohibited when they are offensive to American Indian traditions, or does the principle of religious freedom give them the right to use this public space? What happens when Navajo sacred histories, and Navajo understandings of how the space should be used, are deeply offensive to the Pueblo Indians who trace their ancestry to those that built this ancient city? Joyce asks, “Who decides under the bureaucratic, institutional umbrella of First Amendment rights which narrative becomes part of the cultural canon and which is denied admittance?”

Finally, Hendrickson’s paper, a study of curanderas who work across racial/cultural boundaries in the southwest borderlands, showed us the power of religious imagination and practices of healing to cross borders. Here, Mexican-American curanderas reshape and perhaps re-indigenize their practices in order to appeal to multiple audiences and especially New Age Anglos who, in Hendrickson’s analysis, are predisposed through an ongoing American metaphysical tradition to these hybridized healing modalities. Here, without minimizing the ongoing power disparities that shape these exchanges, Henrickson shows us how the power of religious imagination may be invoked to provide healing across all sorts of boundaries.

My conclusion proposed several broad rubrics (none of them original to me) for thinking about religion in the American west.

I. WEST AS PLACE.

·      Exploring the distinctive forms of racial and religious pluralism that are characteristic in this region

·      The particular salience and visibility of Native American traditions

·      The significance of LAND and PLACE for understanding religious practices, experience, and traditions in the west.

·      Mapping RELIGIOUS GEOGRAPHIES: region, regional identities and traditions as crucial to the study of religion. We can draw here on the work of cultural geographers and others who have done significant work to illuminate the cultural significance of place and geography.

·      GLOBALIZATION as a crucial emphasis in current scholarship across the humanities. How can we place our analysis of regional religious geographies in the context of globalized patterns of trade, communication, immigration, and religion?

II. WEST AS IMAGINED.

·      The role of religious imagination in constructing regional identities

·      The place of the west in national and global religious imaginations

Please share your thoughts in response these comments, and your suggestions for additional rubrics and themes.