Religion in the American Experience

Our history is clear: religions and their leaders have always inspired Americans during times of national tragedy and crisis with their words – their sermons that give their people hope. Today the country faces a raging global pandemic, now going on twelve months, and its staggering effects: death without loved ones near, unemployment, hunger, shuttered public schools, uncertainty, isolation, fear...

Sports is everywhere in America, as we all know: the Super Bowl, the Masters, the World Series, the Stanley Cup, the U.S. Open, the Olympics, the NBA, MLB, NFL, youth travel leagues, high school sports, and the list goes on and on. So maybe if we understand sports better, we can understand America better. For the podcast series “Religion in the American Experience”, we want to learn about the rela...

The Catholic Church is the United State's second largest religious grouping, after Protestantism, and the country's largest church or religious denomination.  As of 2018, 23% of the United States population was Catholic. This is startling when you realize that at the beginning of the American experiment, religions and their adherents were almost completely Protestant and vehemently, sometimes viol...

Welcome! The start-up National Museum of American Religion is dedicated to telling the profound story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion, convinced that understanding this history will help us all see the revolutionary nature and indispensability of the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States. Through the podcast series “Relig...

The Civil Rights Movement is important to America and it’s important to Americans at this point in our national history. The story itself and the reception of the story is complex, nuanced, messy, profound, compelling, sad, joyful, hopeful and despairing. The Civil Rights Movement story is inextricably linked to Black slavery, what some call one of America’s two original sins. A good way to better...

Welcome! I’m your host Chris Stevenson, of The National Museum of American Religion, which is dedicated to telling the profound story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion. From what I saw on TV as it was happening and what I have read in the newspapers in the days afterwards, “religion” was very present at the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. “Jesus...

Hello, this is Chris Stevenson, host of the podcast series “Religion in the American Experience.” Due to the events of last week at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. we will not publish, as we usually do, our normally scheduled episode on Monday January 18th. Instead, over the next two weeks we will convene a panel of American religious history scholars to discuss how the history of re...

The name Joseph Smith is known to many Americans, as is the faith he founded, once called “Mormonism”, but recently having requested to be identified by their original, historic name: “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Joseph Smith is revered by members of that church as a “modern prophet of God”; and derided by others as a “charlatan” or worse. We thought that to understand Americ...

The interest in religion and the founding of the United States is broad, deep, intense and continuous. And this interest is had by those who are themselves religious and those who are not.   Today we have with us two scholars who have expertise in this area, Mark David Hall and Daniel Dreisbach, to help us understand what we know about this from the historical record and what we don’t.  Daniel Dre...

“Religious freedom” is everywhere in the news: it is invoked, it is debated, it is implicated, it is litigated, it is ridiculed, it is derided, it is loved, it is honored, it is before the Supreme Court & school boards, and it is found in religious sermons. The National Museum of American Religion offers to shed light on its history, in the hope that Americans, knowing some of its history, will un...

When one thinks of what religion has done to America, at least for me and I think for many of our listeners, “Baptists” come to mind – they are influential, they are large in number, and their history is very much linked to American history. If one wants to understand America, one needs to understand America’s religious history – and if one needs to understand America’s religious history, one must...

A few months ago I saw the title of a new book about missionaries who spied for the United States during World War II and knew we had to do a podcast episode about it. Religion’s influence on American foreign policy is an important and fascinating one, and this is a relatively unknown story that is just coming to light. It may have also caught my attention because I was a missionary in northern Ge...

Blacks in America are seared into the national consciousness. Slavery is considered one of America’s two “original sins.” Jim Crow, lynching, racism, inequality, mass incarceration, police brutality, specifically the death of George Floyd earlier this year, white supremacy – all are part of our understanding of the flawed yet noble and grand American tapestry. To many Americans, I think, the “Blac...

United States foreign policy is of great interest to all Americans because of the important thread in the American narrative that says we should use our blessings of freedom and wealth to benefit the world: foreign policy matters. The burning question for us is, how did religion influence American foreign policy and war? To help us answer this question we will talk with Andrew Preston, Professor o...

As we all observe and participate in the national reckoning with racism after the death of George Floyd on May 25th of this year, a fuller and more accurate understanding of how race and religion have been intertwined in United States history will be of use. Paul Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of History and Presidential Teaching Scholar at University of Colorado – Colorado Springs, where h...

When European Christians arrived in this vast territory we now call the Americas over 400 years ago, they found indigenous people here with their own meaningful and personal and sacred religious beliefs. The contact and conflict between Europeans and Natives sparked a long-term series of religious encounters that intertwined with other settler colonial processes, such as commerce, government, ensl...

Once again America is reckoning with racism, this time in the wake of George Floyd’s death. 2020 is point near to us on the long historical timeline of both black slavery AND racism in the United States, which includes the secession of southern States in 1860 and the calamitous Civil War which followed, killing more than 600,000 Americans, and raining down disaster and ruin on the young nation’s h...

Evangelicals have been active and influential in all parts of the American experience. For this interview, the term “Evangelical” is defined as: believers who (1) have had a born-again experience resulting in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, (2) accept the full authority of the Bible in matters of faith and conduct of life, and (3) are committed to spreading the gospel by bearing public...

Religion and the concept of religious freedom as a governing principal in the United States, has always played a role in our politics, and that includes in presidential elections. As we are all aware, 2020 has been no different. History can help us navigate today’s contentious zone of Church and State, and the contest between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1800 may be particularly beneficial....

2020 has brought America the COVID-19 pandemic, the largest wildfire season in California history, according to the California officials, and so many hurricanes that we have had to start using Greek letters to identify them. These things have traumatized Americans and America itself. When Americans have experienced trauma, they have often reached out to religion hoping for some emotional comfort,...