John Corrigan - Religion in America

This is a story about religion in America. But it is not the only story about religion in America. At certain points in the telling, it corresponds with other stories about people, places, and religious things. Sometimes, on the other hand, this story takes turns that distance it from those other stories. Like all other stories of a nations past, it is an intertwining of many threads of narrative. Here and there those threads are woven into a relatively sturdy, even fabric. In other places, the warp and woof are uneven, ragged, or fragile. History is complex, to some extent indeterminate, and is subject to constant revision. This history of the development of American religious life is, accordingly, a work in progress. A story changes with each telling, and this story is no different. In preparing Religion in America for a ninth edition, I have added several new sections, and have enlarged and detailed others. In this edition, I have focused especially on important themes and events in the wake of 9/11, which are discussed in a new . I have emphasized the emotional quality of religion in America, and cited examples of the range of emotions and the ways in which they are expressed. There is more here on religion and business, race and ethnicity, sexuality, and conservative politics. The claiming of space, and the construction of ideologies of space, together with the impulses to build empire, are more prominent here than in previous editions. The trajectories of Hispanic Catholicism and Native American cultures, which define the earliest histories of religion in America, are more perceptible in recent years and accordingly are discussed in greater detail.

Five overlapping contexts frame the story. First, religion is pictured in its relations with other aspects of American life. Religious traditions and communities exercise a profound influence on the formation of culture in America. Religion, in turn, is constantly being shaped by forces outside the church, synagogue, mosque, and meetinghouse. Some religion is itself outside the place of worship, constituted as part of personal or family religion, or limited to a small group of innovators who cultivate their piety outside institutional life. Such religion often represents an even more dynamic, ongoing negotiation between religious tradition and cultural change. Religion in America addresses religious life as a whole as it arises in the context of these reciprocal relationships.

Second, the Atlantic dimension forms a key part of the story. Although religions in America exhibit distinctive features, most religious persons practice devotions that bear the mark of a predominantly European background. After the initial migration of Europeans to America, the European influence was sustained in various ways and most conspicuously through waves of immigration. It is true as well that in the course of being translated to an American context, religion that originated in Europe was modified. In some cases the change was minimal, and in other cases the process of adaptation resulted in dramatic recastings of religious belief and practice. The influence from Africa likewise was profound. African traditional religions were blended with Christianity in the Americas, sometimes in stages that included a string of locations, from Africa (where Christian missionaries had begun working) to Caribbean islands, then to the American South, and then to other parts of the United States as blacks migrated in large numbers northward. Islam also came from Africa. The exchange between the United States and the Caribbean in the twentieth century was a lively back and forth process that was especially visible in relationships between large cities such as Miami, New York, New Orleans, and Chicago, and the islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and others. Though scholars generally refer to the Atlantic world in relation to the period 15001800, it is important that we see exchanges between Europe, the Americas, and Africa as ongoing. Communities formed through the large-scale immigration of Hispanics from Mexico and Latin America in the twenty-first century still bear some of the marks of the lively dissemination of culture (and especially the Spanish Catholic influence) that took place in an earlier period, in a colonial context characterized by European domination of indigenes. Hispanic Catholicism, not only in the southwest but virtually throughout the nation, has developed through a complex of influences, ranging from Spanish devotional practices and Native American religious life to well-established local traditions regarding the Virgin Mary and various saints and holy figures. The influences arising from Pacific immigration, while less visible than those from the Atlantic, have been significant in the development of Buddhism, Hinduism, Chinese and Japanese religions, and other religious communities that look to Asia for their leads. The majority of Asian immigrants, however, have been Christian.