Religion in America

From Native American traditions and Puritan migrations in the seventeenth century to Barack Obama's "crypto-Islam" and debates over gay rights in the twenty-first: American history is religious history. For centuries, religion has shaped how Americans have carried out their everyday lives, interacted with others, understood themselves, and perceived the wider world. Focusing primarily on religious life in the United States, this course invites students to explore the relationship between religion and society in North America by addressing key questions and critical tensions surrounding such issues as race, ethnicity, science, gender, capitalism, pluralism, sexuality, and secularism.