Religion in the Lands That Became America

“Thomas Tweed’s Religion in the Lands that Became America is the most startling, groundbreaking, and encyclopedic account of American religious development published in the last half-century.”—Jon Butler, author of God in Gotham: The Miracle of Religion in Modern Manhattan “This is a magnificent achievement. Tweed has crafted a truly new narrative, brilliantly conceived and breathtaking in its scope. Eminently readable and deeply engaging, it inaugurates a new era in American religious history.”—Ann Taves, University of California at Santa Barbara “Rejecting myopic ‘traditional’ framings, Tweed takes the reader on an engaging and necessary journey through the narratives, beliefs, and practices of those who have lived in the land currently called America. This is a story with more characters, more places, and more voices—a better history for everyone.”—Agustín Fuentes, author of Why We Believe “The book is an essential guide to understanding the complex religious history of multiple groups and their interactions. Importantly, it presents often neglected traditions, including those of Indigenous peoples both ancient and modern.”—Lawrence W. Gross, University of Redlands “Thomas Tweed has written a magnificent new history of American religion that explores the many crises of sustainability, from the Ice Age to the Information Age, that have threatened human flourishing. Religion in the Lands That Became America is a strikingly original book that is designed to help us make sense of the many difficulties—ecological, technological, and spiritual—that we confront today. This is an eloquent and deeply researched book, a magisterial achievement.”—Catherine A. Brekus, Harvard Divinity School