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One Nation, Under Gods
A groundbreaking new look at the story of America
At the heart of the nation's spiritual history are audacious and often violent scenes. But the Puritans and the shining city on the hill give us just one way to understand the United States. Rather than recite American history from a Christian vantage point, Peter Manseau proves that what really happened is worth a close, fresh look.
Thomas Jefferson himself collected books on all religions and required that the brand new Library of Congress take his books, since Americans needed to consider the "twenty gods or no god" he famously noted were revered by his neighbors. Looking at the Americans who believed in these gods, Manseau fills in America's story of itself, from the persecuted "witches" at Salem and who they really were, to the persecuted Buddhists in WWII California, from spirituality and cults in the '60s to the recent presidential election where both candidates were for the first time non-traditional Christians.
One Nation, Under Gods shows how much more there is to the history we tell ourselves, right back to the country's earliest days. Dazzling in its scope and sweep, it is an American history unlike any you've read.
At the heart of the nation's spiritual history are audacious and often violent scenes. But the Puritans and the shining city on the hill give us just one way to understand the United States. Rather than recite American history from a Christian vantage point, Peter Manseau proves that what really happened is worth a close, fresh look.
Thomas Jefferson himself collected books on all religions and required that the brand new Library of Congress take his books, since Americans needed to consider the "twenty gods or no god" he famously noted were revered by his neighbors. Looking at the Americans who believed in these gods, Manseau fills in America's story of itself, from the persecuted "witches" at Salem and who they really were, to the persecuted Buddhists in WWII California, from spirituality and cults in the '60s to the recent presidential election where both candidates were for the first time non-traditional Christians.
One Nation, Under Gods shows how much more there is to the history we tell ourselves, right back to the country's earliest days. Dazzling in its scope and sweep, it is an American history unlike any you've read.
481 pages, Paperback
First published January 27, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
March 23, 2015
The author tells a series of stories from 1492 until today, and he tells the stories so well that if I were to pick a random year, I could tell you which story the author told and also tell you the chapter that came before and the chapter that came after. He tells his story so well that I can in my mind recreate the book from the first chapter to the last and not miss a chapter in the telling. Within each story the author will put the story into the context of the time and then tie the pieces together.
The best way to illustrate his technique is to highlight one of his chapters, Mary Moody Emerson, known as the baby who was at one of the first battles of the Revolutionary War, saw a Hindu give a talk at her boarding house, this made her aware of beliefs beyond her own, and while she lived with her nephew, Ralph Waldo Emerson, she taught how one could think beyond their own certainties, and that led to the Transcendental Movement and led to Moby Dick by Melville. He ties the connections of each of his stories, gives the context, and always entertains. (A chapter after will be about San Francisco and the Chinese, and a chapter before was on the burning of the Capitol in the War of 1812 and Jefferson's library. Everything connects within this book, both within the chapters and between the chapters).
Within each chapter he ties each piece into a coherent whole and puts the context around the story, and between each chapter he relates it to the previous chapter such that he writes an incredibly interesting set of stories which gives everyone a peek into how a country is seamlessly woven together into a tapestry of different pieces which only makes sense after the whole is observed.
I found each of the stories awe inspiring. He is that good of a story teller, and he'll always tell you why the story matters today.
The best way to illustrate his technique is to highlight one of his chapters, Mary Moody Emerson, known as the baby who was at one of the first battles of the Revolutionary War, saw a Hindu give a talk at her boarding house, this made her aware of beliefs beyond her own, and while she lived with her nephew, Ralph Waldo Emerson, she taught how one could think beyond their own certainties, and that led to the Transcendental Movement and led to Moby Dick by Melville. He ties the connections of each of his stories, gives the context, and always entertains. (A chapter after will be about San Francisco and the Chinese, and a chapter before was on the burning of the Capitol in the War of 1812 and Jefferson's library. Everything connects within this book, both within the chapters and between the chapters).
Within each chapter he ties each piece into a coherent whole and puts the context around the story, and between each chapter he relates it to the previous chapter such that he writes an incredibly interesting set of stories which gives everyone a peek into how a country is seamlessly woven together into a tapestry of different pieces which only makes sense after the whole is observed.
I found each of the stories awe inspiring. He is that good of a story teller, and he'll always tell you why the story matters today.
November 22, 2015
Wow, what a fantastic read and timely too in these times of religious and ethnic hatred with violence and perpetual mistrust.
Peter Manseau has done a wonderful historical rendering of colonization of America both ethnic, religious and cultural starting fro the Spanish to British and French with race relations with the natives and their traditions and later migrant influence from other traditions including Jewish, Chinese, Japanese, Indians with their own customs, religions, conflicts and history. There is nice introduction to economic upheavals to the world wars, and different migration policies as well as race relations.
The insight in Catholic and Protestant conflicts with slave trade and Salem witch trials in very insightful.
The chapters are nicely arranged and follow a chronological order and easy easy to read. This should be required reading for ALL AMERICANS and anyone interested in history and politics.
Peter Manseau has done a wonderful historical rendering of colonization of America both ethnic, religious and cultural starting fro the Spanish to British and French with race relations with the natives and their traditions and later migrant influence from other traditions including Jewish, Chinese, Japanese, Indians with their own customs, religions, conflicts and history. There is nice introduction to economic upheavals to the world wars, and different migration policies as well as race relations.
The insight in Catholic and Protestant conflicts with slave trade and Salem witch trials in very insightful.
The chapters are nicely arranged and follow a chronological order and easy easy to read. This should be required reading for ALL AMERICANS and anyone interested in history and politics.
December 4, 2015
This was quite interesting. I have it as an audio book, which makes it difficult to go back and check details, so I can't offer much by way of review. The author's point is that America has been, since its earliest days, a religious melting pot. He starts with the beliefs of the Taino, a native people of the Caribbean at the time of Columbus's visit, and works forward in time. Lots on good stuff here. For instance, apparently, many Africans brought to this country as slaves were Muslims, and slave owners were, for a long while, reluctant to encourage the conversion of their slaves to Christianity due to the discomfort which might arise from enslaving a fellow Christian. So awkward. Anyway, at one point, according to Manseau, “While Muslims accounted for less than 1% of the total population of the United States in 2010, enslaved Africans with a connection to Islam likely made up more than 5% of the population two hundred years before.” (pg 234, thanks to Amazon's “Look Inside” feature!)
Manseau talks about religious differences of opinion among the Puritans (Anne Hutchinson and Co.); the challenges facing Jewish immigrants during the American Revolution; Native American religious sects which were influenced by Christian missionaries and then in turn appear to have influenced Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism; Hinduism; the importance of religiously based communities for Chinese immigrants in California in the late 1800's; the plight of Japanese-American Buddhists in the country during WWII; the origins of Scientology, etc. The author does not deny that Christianity has been the majority faith in the U.S., but he points out that beliefs among people living in close proximity will generally tend to have some influence on each other, and that having some understanding of the beliefs of one's neighbors is a good thing.
My only complaint is that I wish Manseau went into more detail on the specifics of the various religious beliefs. He gives these relatively little time, focusing instead on the stories of how the individuals and groups became integrated (or didn't) into American culture. Even in the case of Anne Hutchinson, where race/ethnicity was not at issue, the aspect of her religious “differentness” which gets the most attention is that Hutchinson was seen as taking on a teaching/leadership role in a group which preferred a woman to remain subservient. In most of the stories, the focus is on difficulties caused by racism and cultural and ethnic differences, rather than specifics of the various faiths held by groups in question. Still, many fine stories about groups of people who often get little time in the history books – an enjoyable book!
Manseau talks about religious differences of opinion among the Puritans (Anne Hutchinson and Co.); the challenges facing Jewish immigrants during the American Revolution; Native American religious sects which were influenced by Christian missionaries and then in turn appear to have influenced Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism; Hinduism; the importance of religiously based communities for Chinese immigrants in California in the late 1800's; the plight of Japanese-American Buddhists in the country during WWII; the origins of Scientology, etc. The author does not deny that Christianity has been the majority faith in the U.S., but he points out that beliefs among people living in close proximity will generally tend to have some influence on each other, and that having some understanding of the beliefs of one's neighbors is a good thing.
My only complaint is that I wish Manseau went into more detail on the specifics of the various religious beliefs. He gives these relatively little time, focusing instead on the stories of how the individuals and groups became integrated (or didn't) into American culture. Even in the case of Anne Hutchinson, where race/ethnicity was not at issue, the aspect of her religious “differentness” which gets the most attention is that Hutchinson was seen as taking on a teaching/leadership role in a group which preferred a woman to remain subservient. In most of the stories, the focus is on difficulties caused by racism and cultural and ethnic differences, rather than specifics of the various faiths held by groups in question. Still, many fine stories about groups of people who often get little time in the history books – an enjoyable book!
March 30, 2015
After reading "One Nation, Under Gods: A New American History" it is hard to escape the conclusion that America as a society came into existence as distinctly Christian. It also becomes clear that America as a nation has been religiously diverse since its creation. Standing between these apparent contradictions is the fact that America's founding documents were carefully crafted to protect that diversity and to a certain extent promote pluralism. Mansaeau's history chronicles that diversity and how it has struggled to survive in the face of overwhelming cultural and institutional resistance.
The book is not written as a diatribe, but the history of faith and religion in america inevitably reads as a litany of religious intolerance and even outright persecution. The chapter on american Buddhists, with a focus on Japanese-American soldiers sent to the front while their families were imprisoned in internment camps, is especially poignant. I think the modern american Christians claiming persecution and discrimination would do well to read this book to put their grievances in perspective.
Manseau concludes the book with an affirmation that while America's history may be as a de facto Christian nation, it was never an official Christian nation. (and I would add never should be) Today the country is moving further from even that de facto status as a Christian society. As Barack Obama noted in his inaugural address “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers.” Manseau demonstrates convincingly that we have always been thus. Understanding that fact is a good first step toward resolving much of the religious tensions currently dividing american communities and clogging up the courts.
The book is not written as a diatribe, but the history of faith and religion in america inevitably reads as a litany of religious intolerance and even outright persecution. The chapter on american Buddhists, with a focus on Japanese-American soldiers sent to the front while their families were imprisoned in internment camps, is especially poignant. I think the modern american Christians claiming persecution and discrimination would do well to read this book to put their grievances in perspective.
Manseau concludes the book with an affirmation that while America's history may be as a de facto Christian nation, it was never an official Christian nation. (and I would add never should be) Today the country is moving further from even that de facto status as a Christian society. As Barack Obama noted in his inaugural address “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers.” Manseau demonstrates convincingly that we have always been thus. Understanding that fact is a good first step toward resolving much of the religious tensions currently dividing american communities and clogging up the courts.
February 28, 2015
This was exactly the kind of book I like best -- solid scholarship written in a very readable style; new information that's been hiding in plain sight; a story that enriches rather than diminishes my view of the complexity of the world. I loved learning more about Tituba and the ways in which the practices that got her accused of witchcraft (charges she successfully defeated, unlike many of her unluckier sisters in Salem) were drawn from African and Native American syncretistic traditions. I loved learning more about the Hodenosaunee, or Iroquois: "For the Iroquois, to beh the People of the Longhouse was not merely to descdribe the structure in which they lived. It was instead to affirm an image of themselves as united beyond the expected bounds of kinship. the longhouse was a physical representation of the accord that existed between the Six Nations, which was known as the Gayanashawgowa, or the Great Law of Peace. No mere mortal agreement, this was regarded as a divine reality" (157). I was fascinated to learn about the Jews who bankrolled the Revolution, and about Omar ibn Said, whose autobiography tells one version of the lives of the "perhaps 20 percent of African-born men and women who were followers of Islam before losing their faith and their history when transported as captives" (234). I loved learning more about Mary Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (who first translated the Lotus Sutra into English, from a French rendition), and Margaret Fuller, who were instrumental in bringing Hindu thought to the United States (how can I not have noticed all of Melville's explicitly Hindu references in _Moby Dick_?
Manseau says, a propos of Emerson's path, "Americans have never been a people of fixed faith; they are, instead, a people whose spiritual lives are works in progress, open to the influences of the world at some points of their lives, as unchangeable as a closed book at others. Conversions come and go for reasons pragmatic as well as divine.
I loved learning about the Sikhs who formed the earliest group of immigrants from southern Asia, and that many Sikh men married Mexican women, and that there is "a leading scholar of Punjabi-Mexican culture," Karen Leonard. Manseau contends that "[The black church] is not merely an ethnic variation of the Christianity brought from Europe, but a distinctly American tradition shaped by practices with deep African roots" (408).
Finally, "The American Revolution . . . was not fought in order to establish a Christian nation, as some partisan historians would have us believe" (185).
Manseau says, a propos of Emerson's path, "Americans have never been a people of fixed faith; they are, instead, a people whose spiritual lives are works in progress, open to the influences of the world at some points of their lives, as unchangeable as a closed book at others. Conversions come and go for reasons pragmatic as well as divine.
I loved learning about the Sikhs who formed the earliest group of immigrants from southern Asia, and that many Sikh men married Mexican women, and that there is "a leading scholar of Punjabi-Mexican culture," Karen Leonard. Manseau contends that "[The black church] is not merely an ethnic variation of the Christianity brought from Europe, but a distinctly American tradition shaped by practices with deep African roots" (408).
Finally, "The American Revolution . . . was not fought in order to establish a Christian nation, as some partisan historians would have us believe" (185).
May 5, 2022
This is a history of religious pluralism in the United States. From the ships of Columbus which carried men of Christian, Jewish and Muslim backgrounds to new religious movements that were born and grew within US culture the story of the United States has been a story of tension and tolerance of persecution and cross pollination. The author examines specific religious groups at specific moments in the U.S. history.
February 10, 2018
This novel provides factual documented information detailing America's religious hypocrisy since the Puritans arrived on the shores belonging to an indigenous people who they identified as heathens soulless savages who need their religion to save their souls.
The foundation of American Christian's is rooted in escaping the persecution of England, yet to arrive upon a continent to spread the word of their religion while never understanding the people, their language, or their religion already in place.
Sadly, the American Thanksgiving holiday is the ultimate insult to all indigenous people who assisted the Puritan who did not know how to survive in a land.
There are many instances of religious ignorance identified in this novel for which I have come to respect people who do not believe in American organized religions, who pay no state or federal tax yet homelessness, poverty has prevailed.
Sadly never in the history of this country has any American Christian religion banded together with other faiths to build a coalition to defeat homelessness or poverty. I imagine the monies collected as tithed, could have wiped out social issues in America decades ago.
This novel provides excellent factual information, and I would only hope that every colligate religious student could be allowed to read.
The foundation of American Christian's is rooted in escaping the persecution of England, yet to arrive upon a continent to spread the word of their religion while never understanding the people, their language, or their religion already in place.
Sadly, the American Thanksgiving holiday is the ultimate insult to all indigenous people who assisted the Puritan who did not know how to survive in a land.
There are many instances of religious ignorance identified in this novel for which I have come to respect people who do not believe in American organized religions, who pay no state or federal tax yet homelessness, poverty has prevailed.
Sadly never in the history of this country has any American Christian religion banded together with other faiths to build a coalition to defeat homelessness or poverty. I imagine the monies collected as tithed, could have wiped out social issues in America decades ago.
This novel provides excellent factual information, and I would only hope that every colligate religious student could be allowed to read.
December 5, 2017
It's taken me almost a year to finish this book. That's not a reflection on the quality of the book at all, but it does speak to the fact that there's so much stuff packed in here that I had to read it very, very slowly in order to absorb everything and give each section the attention it deserved. I learned a lot from this book, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about America's peculiar relationship with religion.
July 27, 2019
This book provides a thorough history of religion in America. Primarily the author continually refutes the story that America was founded on a desire for religious freedom. Instead, a protestant theocracy has often been the dominate desire our governments have been built upon. Religious groups of all flavors have had to fight for their place in America.
November 7, 2015
This was deceptively digestible. Each chapter covers a particular instance of religious difference ranging from early colonial times to our own more relatively tolerant ones. It may as well be called a history of American syncretism. Whether discussing Cotton Mather's unintentional forays into African religious practices by way of smallpox inoculation, the influence of Islam on slave religion, the role of Chinatowns in the introduction of Buddhism to the US public, Manceau in his erudite way illuminates lesser known episodes of heterodoxy in a country that once strove for uniformity. There are lots of interesting tidbits and stories and I was ultimately surprised by how much I learned.
September 18, 2021
This book seeks to challenge the dominant notion (especially on the right), that America is steeped in Judeo-Christian tradition, thus, a Christian Nation, a view that is, in my opinion, no longer dominant anyway in America’s mainstream narratives, since by possessing this view can lead to being labeled racist, xenophobic, non-inclusive, those sorts of thing. There are so many people and minority religions discussed, from the Puritans Colony, who became haven for the persecuted people from England, who proceeded to persecute people who did not conform to their point of view (remember the Salem Witch Trials!), a Jew who came close to breaking a blasphemy law, a muslim prince who became a slave in southern plantations, how the inoculation was partly inspired by African tribe health practice, the list goes on and on, with the part of Buddhist Nisei who sacrificed their lives for American flag, while their brother and sisters back home were sent to concentration camps. The book closes with the supposed assumptions of multi-religions victory upon Judeo-Christian notions, and discussion on Barrack Obama’s spirituality (which probably a standard practice when discussing this sort of things). But however, despite being incompatible to my political point of view, I still find this book informative, for it shed some lights upon how the religious minorities also contributed into America’s history.
December 6, 2018
I'm not sure what I expected, but what I got was different than I imagined in this book of stories of various religious experiences in the US, from the Taino people who met Columbus on the beach to the fantastic creation of a uniquely American almost-religion in the connections between Leary, the Summer of Love, Bouroughs and the Beats and L. Ron Hubbard. Oh, and Obama and his gutsy statement that we are a nation of many religions, which I don't remember many people picking up on at the time. And that is the overall point of the book. Even from the earliest Northeast settlements rigid with religion, there were always people who were religious outsiders, who saw things differently and even lost their lives for it. Do you know that in the early days of slavery, an estimated 5% of people in the Colonies were Muslim? Or that the Northwest was once a haven for Sikhs? Or that Caribbean Jews propped up the Revolutionary War economy. Those are the kind of stories this book tells. It's good, a book that creatively reframes the question of American religion as more a question of overall faith than adherence to one set of doctrines. That's a good thing.
May 2, 2018
This was an absolutely fascinating book - less a comprehensive, continuous "American history" than a patchwork of starting places, sometimes directly challenging taught assumptions about American history. Each chapter features a different minority religion and its earliest presence in North America. There was a concentration in the colonial and revolutionary periods, but they span from what we know of the Taino religion around first contact with Europeans through to the interweaving of anti-Buddhist sentiment with anti-Japanese racism during WWII.
Personally, I found that concentration of chapters spanning from the establishment of colonial America through to the early 1800s the most wonderfully challenging. The trivia version of this book is indicatively captivating - Cotton Mather learned about inoculation from his Yoruba slave, and there's a decent chance that an Iroquois born-again sort of Christianity was an early influence of Jospeh Smith.
If you want to find out just how much you don't know about American history, this is a great book to read.
Personally, I found that concentration of chapters spanning from the establishment of colonial America through to the early 1800s the most wonderfully challenging. The trivia version of this book is indicatively captivating - Cotton Mather learned about inoculation from his Yoruba slave, and there's a decent chance that an Iroquois born-again sort of Christianity was an early influence of Jospeh Smith.
If you want to find out just how much you don't know about American history, this is a great book to read.
January 9, 2018
This book didn’t as much challenge the conventional notion that America was a primarily a Christian nation at its founding, I think if you read between the lines in the story you can see the author acknowledges this. The book was rich with well researched stories of how people of other faiths were in America prior to Christians arriving and how people of these other faiths fought for their piece of the American dream and were many times persecuted for it. It also shows in some detail how political and theological luminaries in early America were influenced by other religions in some ways. I particularly liked the chapter on the first Sikhs in America, it was enlightening. Definitely worth a read.
November 10, 2018
This book was an interesting look at American history, and I'm usually not an American history fan. But it talked almost exclusively about religion, which I find fascinating. It's a little dated with their hopeful final chapter talking about how Obama has ushered in a new era of tolerance, since now we know what the backlash to those 8 years of tolerance was going to be. I'm afraid that unlike the author, I cannot be hopeful about religious, or other, diversity in America anymore.
February 19, 2023
I think I wasn't the target audience for this one. I had started it, putting it down halfway through because I was bored with the long-term historical background. The more recent American religious experience I found was largely political and sociological, which wasn't what I was looking for. The book is well written, and the audio narration is a good fit, so I'm saying that it might work out for others, just not me.
August 25, 2018
Had to use this for a class set up by another professor. Manseau is a wonderful writer that is erudite and yet his prose is as beautiful as it is accessible. There is the emotions of a good storyteller coupled with excellent research and conclusions of the evidence. I would use this again if I ever get to teach a similar class.
May 30, 2019
I enjoyed this book. Overall, it's an account of how the religious beliefs and practices of subjugated peoples influenced America, but each chapter could be read on its own. Lots of cool pockets of history that I didn't know about--and it's both scholarly and compellingly written, so win-win. I'd definitely read more work from this author.
January 12, 2019
I learned a lot reading this, and all of the little stories within this larger story were really well done. Its an education, and covers a lot of moments of US history that most of us would never have heard about otherwise.
February 21, 2019
This book started out so interestingly, and then felt like a series of vignettes that didn’t feel like it told a cohesive story anymore. The vignettes were still interesting, but it wasn’t what I expected based on the beginning of the book. Worth reading, though!
July 9, 2024
Manseau makes even the most prosaic and known portions of America's religious history interesting. He does an excellent job of stitching together things happening in different portions of the country throughout the 19th Century, too, which can be difficult to do.
September 16, 2017
Absolutely fascinating and wonderfully written.
October 29, 2018
Interesting, well-researched overview of how religion (both Christian and non-Christian) have shaped America since 1492.
August 5, 2023
Worth it for the story of Jefferson’s library alone. Interesting, but ends with Obama and false hopes. Good reminder of America’s diversity from the jump.
April 4, 2015
Very good insights into the religious diversity that was America with the arrival of the first people from the Old World. Note that I didn't say Europe.
People knowledgeable about the early recorded history of the Americas know that one of the survivors of the Narvaez expedition, along with Cabeza de Vaca, was the Moorish slave Estevanico. who later guided Father de Niza's exploration of today's Arizona and New Mexico beforee either being killed by the Zuni or becoming part of their culture. Manseau details his background from Morocco, how he may have remained Muslim beneath his forced conversion to Christianity and how this adaptationism, along with his skin color and more, may have helped him lead the Narvaez survivors across Texas and northern Mexico. Manseau also, from the start, mentions the Marranos, or "hidden Jews," among Columbus' crew.
From there we look at the varieties of native religion that greeted him in the Caribbean and their later fusion with Yoruba and related African beliefs. From there, it's a look at Yoruba, and Islam, among African slaves in mainland North America, and their influences on black Christianity.
Buddhists among the early Chinese and Japanese immigrants, Sikhs (much more than Hindus) among early Indians, Transcendentalism and Indian Hindus and more all come into the book, as does the analysis of Protestant Christianity as New England's "city on a hill," Mormonism as an example of sectarianism and more.
People knowledgeable about the early recorded history of the Americas know that one of the survivors of the Narvaez expedition, along with Cabeza de Vaca, was the Moorish slave Estevanico. who later guided Father de Niza's exploration of today's Arizona and New Mexico beforee either being killed by the Zuni or becoming part of their culture. Manseau details his background from Morocco, how he may have remained Muslim beneath his forced conversion to Christianity and how this adaptationism, along with his skin color and more, may have helped him lead the Narvaez survivors across Texas and northern Mexico. Manseau also, from the start, mentions the Marranos, or "hidden Jews," among Columbus' crew.
From there we look at the varieties of native religion that greeted him in the Caribbean and their later fusion with Yoruba and related African beliefs. From there, it's a look at Yoruba, and Islam, among African slaves in mainland North America, and their influences on black Christianity.
Buddhists among the early Chinese and Japanese immigrants, Sikhs (much more than Hindus) among early Indians, Transcendentalism and Indian Hindus and more all come into the book, as does the analysis of Protestant Christianity as New England's "city on a hill," Mormonism as an example of sectarianism and more.
May 11, 2015
Even at over 400 pages, this book seems "thin."
It's because Manseau has chosen such a broad lens through which to examine American history--from deism, through atheism, to Islam, Hinduism, and every other religious idea to percolate here. It's just amazing.
Most interesting to me was the way Islam has been a part of America almost since the beginning, since many of Columbus's sailors were former Jews and Muslims hiding under a veneer of Christianity in order to escape the Inquisition. The way that Islam entered the South through enslaved believers was also quite striking--as was the respect shown to those whose learning and faithfulness was eventually found out.
The look at the many obscure gods to be found in American history also touches on major movements and historical ideas that we all know about. Cotton Mather began to promote inoculation against smallpox because of his association with an African slave. Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau were influenced by Hindu speakers who were popular in antebellum Boston. One of the first books in the Library of Congress was a Quran, and the heterodoxy of Thomas Jefferson's donated books was every bit as controversial then as it might seem today.
This is a fascinating read: a unique look into a crucial pillar of American history.
It's because Manseau has chosen such a broad lens through which to examine American history--from deism, through atheism, to Islam, Hinduism, and every other religious idea to percolate here. It's just amazing.
Most interesting to me was the way Islam has been a part of America almost since the beginning, since many of Columbus's sailors were former Jews and Muslims hiding under a veneer of Christianity in order to escape the Inquisition. The way that Islam entered the South through enslaved believers was also quite striking--as was the respect shown to those whose learning and faithfulness was eventually found out.
The look at the many obscure gods to be found in American history also touches on major movements and historical ideas that we all know about. Cotton Mather began to promote inoculation against smallpox because of his association with an African slave. Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau were influenced by Hindu speakers who were popular in antebellum Boston. One of the first books in the Library of Congress was a Quran, and the heterodoxy of Thomas Jefferson's donated books was every bit as controversial then as it might seem today.
This is a fascinating read: a unique look into a crucial pillar of American history.
March 4, 2015
I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads. This book was an enjoyable and, having come from a high school that taught limited history, highly informative read. During my school teachings my history lessons were most remembered for having to memorize which events occurred on which dates, without any explanation or discussion on their actual significance. More specifically, this book's true intrigue is in how many of the most storied men and women in history have influenced, been effected by, or used religion to get into the history books. If you're like me and know next to nothing about history, this is a great book that will hold your interest and help raise your knowledge. If you already know almost everything about history, I'm sure this read will add something to the knowledge you already have. Highly recommended for both history beginners and those well-versed on the subject.
March 21, 2015
ONUG profiles a series of individuals from pre-colonization to the late 60s to tell the story of religion in the United States. These personal stories are used to give a sense of the religious climate in their given time. For the most part, Manseau seeks to give attention to mostly unheard of characters rather than the headliners of American religious history. This is done not to necessarily to subvert all we know about American religion, while showing that America has always been a multi-religious nation, regardless of how we today interpret our Pledge of Allegiance. Thus, many of the stories he tells are of non-Christians, or Christians who were/are considered heretical.
If you are looking for a full survey of American religious history, this is probably not the book for you. But this is an important companion to whatever that book is, giving attention and broadening our focus on what religion was in the US, outside of traditional mainline Christianity.
If you are looking for a full survey of American religious history, this is probably not the book for you. But this is an important companion to whatever that book is, giving attention and broadening our focus on what religion was in the US, outside of traditional mainline Christianity.
November 14, 2015
I picked this one up on the recommendation of a former therapist.
Manseau tells the religious history of our nation from a perspective seldom seen before. The Founding Fathers were not as religious as the Right would have us believe, and that lack of uniformity transformed this country into the melting pot it is today. I always dig into these histories looking for references to historical atheism, but the only stuff I found here pertains to the early colonial days, circa the 1720s.
"Among the charges leveled against the Boston inoculators in the 1720s, none was deployed with as much venom as "atheist". In the colonial world, the word was an all-purpose insult, capable of impugning one's intelligence, morality, and social status in just seven letters." It seems that little has changed in almost 300 years.
Manseau tells the religious history of our nation from a perspective seldom seen before. The Founding Fathers were not as religious as the Right would have us believe, and that lack of uniformity transformed this country into the melting pot it is today. I always dig into these histories looking for references to historical atheism, but the only stuff I found here pertains to the early colonial days, circa the 1720s.
"Among the charges leveled against the Boston inoculators in the 1720s, none was deployed with as much venom as "atheist". In the colonial world, the word was an all-purpose insult, capable of impugning one's intelligence, morality, and social status in just seven letters." It seems that little has changed in almost 300 years.
April 11, 2015
What an eye-opener this book will be to those who think we, as a nation, was founded on Christianity and are to be a Christian nation today. This scholarly yet very readable book will show historically the influence and importance of varied religious and cultural groups from the 1490s-2009. Notes are located at the end of the book rather than at the bottom of the page or end of the chapter. The index has proven helpful especially when a teen lamented having to give an oral report in class about Arthur Miller's The Crucible. I had him read the section on Tituba and he aced the assignment and taught the teacher. If only Manseau's work would be used by teachers in courses! I received a copy for review from Goodreads First Reads and the volume will have a permanent spot in my library.
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