Religion in the Lands That Became America: A New History

by Thomas A. Tweed

A sweeping retelling of American religious history, showing how religion has enhanced and hindered human flourishing from the Ice Age to the Information Age
 
Until now, the standard narrative of American religious history has begun with English settlers in Jamestown or Plymouth and remained predominantly Protestant and Atlantic. Driven by his strong sense of the historical and moral shortcomings of the usual story, Thomas A. Tweed offers a very different narrative in this ambitious new history. He begins the story much earlier—11,000 years ago—at a rock shelter in present-day Texas and follows Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, transnational migrants, and people of many faiths as they transform the landscape and confront the big lifeway transitions, from foraging to farming and from factories to fiber optics.  
 
Setting aside the familiar narrative themes, he highlights sustainability, showing how religion both promoted and inhibited individual, communal, and environmental flourishing during three sustainability the medieval Cornfield Crisis, which destabilized Indigenous ceremonial centers; the Colonial Crisis, which began with the displacement of Indigenous Peoples and the enslavement of Africans; and the Industrial Crisis, which brought social inequity and environmental degradation. The unresolved Colonial and Industrial Crises continue to haunt the nation, Tweed suggests, but he recovers historical sources of hope as he retells the rich story of America’s religious past.

Genres: History, Religion, American History, Nonfiction, Theology

640 pages, Hardcover

Published May 13, 2025

Reviews

[Sarah Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Review: Religion in the Lands That Became America: A New History by Thomas A. Tweed
Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)

Overview
Thomas A. Tweed’s Religion in the Lands That Became America is a monumental reimagining of American religious history, spanning from the Ice Age to the modern era. This sweeping narrative challenges traditional frameworks by emphasizing the dynamic, often contentious interplay of diverse religious traditions across the continent. Tweed’s work is not merely a chronicle of beliefs but a profound exploration of how religion has both fostered and fractured communities, shaping the moral and cultural contours of what would become the United States.

Strengths
A Boldly Inclusive Narrative
Tweed dismantles Eurocentric and Protestant-dominated accounts by centering Indigenous spiritualities, African diasporic traditions, and marginalized voices. His “lands that became America” framework reframes the story as one of convergence and conflict, long before European colonization. The book’s chronological breadth—from Paleolithic rituals to digital-age religiosity—is unparalleled in its field.

Interdisciplinary Depth
Blending history, anthropology, and critical theory, Tweed examines religion as a lived experience rather than an abstract doctrine. His analysis of material culture (e.g., sacred objects, migration patterns) and ecological contexts (e.g., how landscapes shaped spiritual practices) offers fresh methodological insights.

Ethical Engagement
The book confronts the dark legacies of religious violence, coercion, and erasure while also highlighting moments of resilience and hybridity. Tweed’s critique of settler colonialism and his attention to transnational flows (e.g., enslaved Africans, Asian immigrants) provide a morally nuanced perspective.

Accessible Scholarship
Despite its ambitious scope, the prose remains engaging and jargon-light. Case studies—such as the syncretism of Catholicism and Indigenous beliefs in New Spain or the rise of evangelical print culture—anchor theoretical discussions in vivid human stories.

Weaknesses
Density of Detail
At 640 pages, the book’s encyclopedic approach may overwhelm casual readers. Some sections (e.g., pre-Columbian cosmologies) could benefit from tighter synthesis.

Limited Contemporary Analysis
While the early chapters shine, the treatment of 20th- and 21st-century religious movements feels comparatively abbreviated. A deeper dive into topics like secularism or digital religiosity would strengthen the conclusion.

Comparative Value
Tweed’s work stands apart from surveys like A Religious History of America by Edwin Gaustad by its explicit decolonial lens and global connective threads. It complements The Gods of Indian Country by Jennifer Graber but with a far grander temporal canvas.

Conclusion
Religion in the Lands That Became America is a landmark achievement—a corrective to insular narratives and a testament to the pluralism that has always defined the continent. Tweed’s synthesis of rigor and empathy makes this essential for historians, theologians, and anyone grappling with America’s complex spiritual legacy.

Acknowledgments
Thank you to NetGalley, Yale University Press, and Dr. Thomas A. Tweed for providing a review copy. This book is a vital invitation to rethink the stories we tell about faith, power, and belonging.

Final Verdict
★★★★★ (5/5)—A transformative work that redefines the field.

Note: Ideal for graduate seminars in religious studies, American history, or Indigenous studies.

[Catherine McNiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is FANTASTIC. It is really, really long. If you have any questions about how faith in America found itself in such a complicated place, read this.

[Robert D. Cornwall · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are different ways of telling the story of religion over time. One can do so narrowly or broadly. With regard to the United States or North America, one could focus on one particular religion, such as Christianity. Many of the leading historians of American religion have taken that route. When I studied American Church History, we used Sydney Ahlstrom's A Religious History of the American People. When I taught that class, I used Mark Noll's A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada. Both of these books focused on the history of Christianity. What if, however, one takes a much broader view and starts not with the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, but with the first people who inhabited the lands that became America? That would be a very different story. It isn't that one is wrong and another is correct, but they are different.

Thomas A Tweed offers a macro view of religious history in his book "Religion in the Lands that Became America: A New History." Tweed is the Harold and Martha Welch Professor of American Studies and professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. While acknowledging Ahstrom and others, he sets out on a different journey. Rather than starting with the Pilgrim landing at Plymouth Rock, Tweed seeks to "tell a new story that includes more characters and more places. We'll meet familiar figures like Bradford and those transatlandtic migrants gathered" but we'll meet many other characters, whose stories have not been told, starting with "Horn Shelter Man, a medicine man buried in with 100 grave gifts in a rock shelter in Texas about 11,000 years ago," among others (p. xiii).

Tweed takes us on a journey from the Horn Shelter Man's burial site to the present, moving forward according to different turning points, mostly technologically oriented, such as moving from foraging to farming, and onward to the contemporary age. As we journey through time, we encounter numerous stories that are generally not told, focusing on people and groups living on the margins of the dominant society. Thus, Tweed devotes considerable space to recounting the stories of Native Americans, their religious life, and how they made accommodations and reclaimed their stories and beliefs. He also speaks of those who came to the American shores as slaves. We also encounter stories of the religious life and beliefs of other immigrant communities, especially those who came from Asia. While important figures from the story of Christianity in the United States are told, Tweed wants to make sure that the stories that have not been told in many other places, such as Ahstrom's book, are given proper attention. Because Tweed tells the broad history of religion in the lands that became America, beginning with the earliest migrations, less attention is given to the stories most often told. But, this makes Tweed's account helpful, especially at a time with we're seeing a backlash against telling the whole story, such that many white Americans of European descent are uncomfortable, such that we are seeing attempts to remove diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, while removing uncomfortable stories. Whether Tweed intended to respond to this reality or not, the book functions as an appropriate response..

Tweed organizes his history of religion in the lands that became America, that title is important because America didn't exist until the European migrations. There were peoples living in these lands, with their own histories and customs, and religions. One of the central dimensions of this story is migration, beginning with the first migrations from Asia and perhaps elsewhere. That story is intriguing. So, the itinerant or migrant plays the central role in the story, whether that migration was due to "spiritual motives" or climate and conflict, or enslavement. Whatever the case, people sought a home for themselves. As such, he seeks to show "how communities used utilitarian technologies and figurative tools to make, break, and sometimes restore eco-cultural niches." With that in mind, Tweed focuses on four eco-cultural transitions, beginning with foraging and then moving to farming, factories, and then fiber-optics. Thus, we begin with the earliest migrations, embodied by the story of the Horn Shelter 11,000 years ago, which offers evidence of the existence of early hunter-gather cultures and their religious practices. From there, we move to agriculture, which existed in the Americas long before European migrations. Then, moving into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we see the age of factories and industrialization. Finally, in the story of religious life in the age of fiber optics, that age in which we currently live.

In all, the book comprises ten chapters. The first section is designated as Foraging," and it has one chapter. Here, Tweed focuses on "Foraging Religion: Ancient Crossings and Mobile Niches, 9200-1100 BCE. Tweed offers his interpretation of the various migrations and entry points, noting that the evidence of human presence in the American continents goes back, perhaps thousands of years earlier than previously thought. But during these earlier millennia, the peoples were largely hunter-gatherers.

Part Two is the longest portion of the book, comprising five chapters, under the section heading of "Farming." Interestingly, while Europeans wanted to civilize native populations by teaching them to farm, the native peoples had been engaged in farming for centuries. They may have had different ways of farming, but many had already become farming peoples. So, Chapter 2, titled "Farming Religion: Sedentary Villages and the First Sustainability Crisis, 1100 BCE-1492 tells the stories of several of these civilizations, including the Cahokia peoples of the Mississippi Valley as well as the Chaco peoples of the Southwest and their descendants. With Chapter 3, "Imperial Religion: Agricultural Metaphors, Catholic Missions, and the Second Sustainability Crisis, 1565-1756," we move to the earliest European conquests in the Americas, and another sustainability crisis. This chapter reminds us that the British migrations followed after the Spanish ones. Then in Chapter 4, "Plantation Religion: The Meetinghouse, the Mutisteeple City, and the British Slave Plantation, 1607-1756," Tweed introduces us to the British and to a lesser extent the French migrations, conquests, and planting of European religion. In the British colonies, that was primarily Protestant, though there were pockets such as Maryland, where Catholics found refuge. That story ends in 1756, with the Seven Years War (note that Tweed uses this term rather than the French and Indian War). The Seven Years War took place on both the European and North American continents, and was in many ways the last war of religion. The next chapter, Chapter 5, begins in 1756 and runs to 1791. The title here is Rebellious Religion: Tyranny, Liberty, and the 'Pursuit of Happiness.'" Here, the focus is on the move toward the Revolutionary War and the birth of a nation. Here, Tweed helps understand the religious complexity that emerged, including the development of a new civil religion that seemed to make George Washington something of a sacred person. Before moving to the final chapter in this section, I need to note that throughout the chapters that begin with the Spanish presence in the Americas through the British migrations and the birth of the nation, Tweed doesn't neglect the stories of the Native population, their interactions, usually tragic, with European colonists, and the importation of slaves from Africa, and their contributions to the emerging American context. For them, the promise of liberty was far off. The final chapter in this section is titled "Expansionist Religion: Expanding and Contracting Worlds in the Agrarian 'Empire of Liberty,' 1792-1848." In the early years of the United States, it was still largely an agrarian nation. That was especially true in the South, where slaves worked on plantations. This chapter begins by exploring the attempt to find solutions to the church-state relationships, and then follows the movement west as the nation expands, usually at the expense of Native populations who continually find themselves moved off their lands. Here we encounter some of the key contributors to Early American religious life, including Roman Catholics.

The third section is titled "Factories." The first chapter in this section (Chapter 7) is titled "Industrial Religion: The Sharecropper South, the Reservation West, and the Sustainability Crisis in the Urban Industrial North, 1848-1920." We start in the antebellum world and move through the Civil War, through to the end of World War I. The subtitle reveals Tweed's focus, since African Americans are the sharecroppers, while the reservations in the West are the places that Native Americans were removed to. Then there is the industrialization of the northern cities, which led to considerable movement from the farms of rural America to the cities, where factories offered jobs and the promise of new opportunities to flourish. There is also more immigration, and the struggles to integrate new peoples and their religions and cultures into this new mix. This is also the period of American imperialism, as the United States fought the Spanish, annexing their territories in the Caribbean and the Philippines, as well as other places in the Pacific, including Hawaii. The second chapter in this section, Chapter 8, is titled "Reassuring Religions: Shifting Fears, Diverging Hopes, and Accelerating Crisis." This chapter focuses on the period 1923 to 1963. This is the period of the Depression, another World War, the post-war expansions of American power, and the beginnings of the civil rights movement. That leads to the final chapter in the section, which covers the period 1964 to 1974. On a personal note, these were the years I grew up in, graduating from high school in 1976. It is titled "Countercultural Religion: Spiritual Protests, Postponed Reckonings, and 'Deep Division.'" This is the era of the full bloom of the civil rights movement, the Great Society, the Vietnam War, protests, hippies, environmentalism (Earth Day), the Nixon backlash, and Watergate. It was also a period of increasing disillusionment with the religious establishment.

The final Section is titled "Fiber Optics." It is composed of one chapter, Chapter 10. This chapter is titled "Postindustrial Religon: Networked Niches, Segmented Subcultures, and Persistent Problems, 1975-2020." Here, Tweed tells the story of my adult years, from the mid-1970s, as we emerged from Watergate and Vietnam, running up to the end of the first Trump administration. This is the world I've inhabited as an adult. As Tweed points out, this is an era of "America's religious restructuring." This is the era of megachurches and online religion, along with the continuing decline of institutional religion. While he ends the story in 2000, with the emergent problems of the first Trump administration, the realities of this era continue to this day.

Throughout Thomas Tweed's "Religion in the Lands that became America," we are reminded that change is constant, and that affects different peoples and groups in different ways. We're reminded that too often we neglect the stories of the people who are marginalized (a word that is currently out of fashion). Those stories, however, need to be told, even if they make some folks uncomfortable. It is good to remember that these lands were inhabited long before the European migrations began. It is good to remember that these people had their own civilizations and religious beliefs and practices that helped them make sense of their world. The same is true for those who migrated, even when not of their own choice, as with enslaved Africans, who brought with them their own religious life and practices. For the enslaved, some were Muslim and some were Christian. We forget this.

Thomas Tweed has given us a most unique and helpful history of the religious life of the peoples who have lived in the lands that became America. There is a place for Mark Noll's history and that of Sydney Ahlstrom, but they don't tell the whole story. Tweed doesn't tell us everything, but he does offer us a broad narrative that is needed at this moment.

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conversations about religion in America tend to focus on the spread of Christianity and its developments within America over time. This is an understandable tendency, because it is a major aspect of the story of religion in America.

In Religion in the Lands That Became America: A New History (galley received as part of early review program), Thomas A. Tweed will certainly tell this story, but will not be limited or restricted to it.

He does not begin with Columbus or the Mayflower but with Horn Shelter Man, a grave dated approximately to 11,000 years ago discovered in Texas, and explored what can be imagined regarding the religious views of many of the earliest Indigenous people from the finds. Indigenous spirituality is set forth according to the evidence we have for it as well.

The author details the contacts with others: Polynesians, Vikings, and then Columbus and the Europeans. The author considers how the Indigenous people experienced Christianity and the points of connection, attempts at disconnection, and early forms of syncretism between Indigenous beliefs and Christianity.

From the seventeenth century onward the narrative sets forth the various points of connection between religiosity and what was going on in American history and experience, always with a special view toward the Indigenous, Black people, and others often marginalized in their religious views.

The author ends where he began, considering the current expressions of Christianity back in Texas near where Horn Shelter Man was discovered. The author presents a helpful perspective on religion in America, how it influenced American culture, politics, and society, and was influenced by American culture, politics, and society.

[Eric Grunder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thomas A. Tweed's (2025, Yale University Press) Religion in the lands that became America, is broad look at North American religion, no doubt too broad to some readers because it begins thousands of years before the first Europeans set foot in Jamestown or on Plymouth Rock. That is the book's strength for readers looking for a brief historic catalog of the role various religions have played in this land's development. For readers seeking a more robust understanding, this broad-sweep approach is the book's greatest weakness.
To cite but one example, Tweed devotes only two- or three-pages attention to the rise of the modern partisan press, a point of possible frustration for readers who lived through that period and who continue to watch it unfold.
Still, one point this 368-page history (and nearly that many pages of endnotes and the such) drives home is that religions, in its various forms, have existed in North Ameria probably since human found their way here.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very academic but interesting. Also three hundred pages of endnotes.

[Caleb Cooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars; eco-theological discussions felt forced and disconnected from the main narrative.