Spirits of Empire

“Drawing on extensive research, [Wenger] convincingly overturns the fiction of American religion as divorced from secular governance, framing it instead as a central part of the country’s structural and moral foundations and a site where power and resistance were negotiated. The result is a scrupulous look at the entanglement of empire, sovereignty, and belief in early America.”—Publisher’s Weekly

“Massively researched and brilliantly expounded. . . . [Wenger] focuses on the settler colonialist project by which new European migrants not only conquered the lands of North America but resettled them and re-created them in their own image, replacing not just the original peoples but also every aspect of their lands and cultures.”—The Christian Century

“With her signature conceptual clarity and powerful storytelling, Tisa Wenger makes a profound contribution to the unsettling of religion in ways that matter for the past, present, and future.” —Pamela E. Klassen, author of The Story of Radio Mind: A Missionary’s Journey on Indigenous Land

“American religion will never look the same after this book. Wenger deftly shows how settler-colonial processes course through its capillaries and how the religions of Native peoples and settlers together created an American heartland.”—Michael McNally, author of Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom Beyond the First Amendment

“Tisa Wenger’s lively study has the potential to recharge and reorient American religious history. Spirits of Empire gives a rich documentary account of the entanglements between secularism and settler colonialism.”—Tracy Fessenden, Arizona State University

“A compelling and convincing argument that shows us the many sizes and shapes of religious actors in American history.”—Kevin Bruyneel, Babson College