Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.36 (974 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B06Y3FCPLQ |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 102 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-02-29 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
As she examines transnational networks of race, colonialism, and religion, Wenger elucidates the historical and theoretical conundrums of civilizing missions, Indigeneity, democratization, subaltern agencies, and modern terrors that have rendered freedom of religion as a global formation. Theoretically informed, brilliantly argued, clearly organized, carefully evidenced, beautifully written, and wonderfully textured, Religious Freedom is an important book. This is surely the high-water mark of interdisciplinary scholarship on religious freedom, and it sets a new standard.--Sylvester Johnson, author of African American Religions, 1500-2000In this ambitious and impressive book, Tisa Wenger makes the compelling argument that American religious freedom is inseparable from the logics of race and empire. Exploring the triangulation of religion, race, and empire--and how they are mutually shaped--Tisa Wenger has
In a post-9/11 world, Wenger reflects, public attention to religious freedom and its implications is as consequential as it has ever been.. At the same time, a diverse array of minority groups at home and colonized people abroad invoked and reinterpreted this ideal to defend themselves and their ways of life. In so doing they posed sharp challenges to the racial and religious exclusions of American life. Instead, American ideas about religious freedom were continually reinvented through a vibrant national discourse--Wenger calls it "religious freedom talk--that cannot possibly be separated from the evolving politics of race and empire. Religious freedom is so often presented as a timeless American ideal and an inalienable right, appearing fully formed at the founding of the United States. More often than not, Wenger demonstrates, religious freedom talk worked to privilege the dominant white Christian population. People of almost every religious stripe have argued, debated, negotiated, and brought into being an ideal called American religious freedom, subtly transforming their
. Tisa Wenger, associate professor of American religious history at Yale University, is the author of We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom