The Religious History of America: The Heart of the American Story from Colonial Times to Today

A Dynamic Account of Religion's Central Role in American History

The narrative charts the nation's spiritual landscape across five centuries, opening with diverse Native American traditions and the earliest Spanish and French missions.

Colonial settlements, revolutionary assemblies, and nineteenth-century revivals reveal how theological disputes repeatedly shaped the political order and prompted historic breakthroughs in religious liberty.

Historians Edwin Scott Gaustad and Leigh Eric Schmidt examine the fractured debates surrounding slavery, civil rights, and modern pluralism, documenting how competing convictions continue to redefine public life.

• Colonial Era: Follow the distinct trajectories of Anglican Virginia, Puritan Massachusetts, and Roger Williams’s Rhode Island haven as rival settlements established contrasting models of faith and governance.


• African American Religious History: Explore how enslaved and free believers built autonomous spiritual institutions, tracing the rise of independent congregations from South Carolina’s Silver Bluff to Richard Allen’s Bethel Church in Philadelphia.


• New Religious Movements: Examine nineteenth-century utopian experiments and homegrown traditions, including Mother Ann Lee’s celibate Shakers, John Humphrey Noyes’s Oneida community, and Joseph Smith’s Latter-day Saints.


• Constitutional Battles: Unpack landmark legal clashes over religious freedom and establishment, analyzing Jehovah’s Witnesses challenging mandatory flag salutes alongside Supreme Court rulings on school prayer and peyote rituals.