HIST 256 - Religion as Power in 19th c. America

Credits: (3)
College Curriculum: COLL 200
Domain (Anchored): CSI
Domain (Reaching Out): ALV

This course begins by exploring the discussions about “religion” and “power” conceptual tools. We’ll then develop an analytical and interpretive framework that considers religion as power. How did people acting upon the belief in gods or spirits or supernatural forces make history? This course brings that question to an examination of US history over the “long” nineteenth century–from the post-revolutionary period in the late eighteenth-century to the post-Reconstruction era extending into the early twentieth century. We’ll start with the framing of the US Constitution and the continuing debate over church-state questions, religious freedom, and the extent to which the United States was founded as a “Christian nation.” The course then looks at religion in early 19th c. Native resistance movements, evangelical revivalism and reform, African traditions and slave Christianization, proslavery and antislavery Christianity, Mormonism and patriarchy, Spiritualism and gendered power, anti-Catholicism and the Mexican War, and religion in the Civil War. We’ll conclude in the Jim Crow era with questions that continue to resonate today about the relations of religious extremism and terrorism and the intersection of religion and white supremacy.