Season 4, Episode 12 – SPECIAL: George Washington’s Religion

Guest Bio

John Fea is Professor of American History and Chair of the History Department at Messiah College. He is the author or editor of six books including The Bible Cause: A History of the American Bible Society, Why Study History? Reflecting on the Importance of the Past, and Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction. His essays and reviews have appeared in a variety of scholarly and popular venues.

Show notes:

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/27/nx-s1-5747094/church-and-state-george-washington

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. 

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the private, digital-first National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of how religion has shaped America and how America has shaped religion. This includes the establishment of religious freedom in the United States Constitution’s Article VI and Bill of Rights religion clauses.

Season 4, Episode 11 – History of Religious Freedom in the U.S. with Randall Balmer

Guest Bio

A prize-winning historian and Emmy Award nominee, Randall Balmer holds the John Phillips Chair in Religion at Dartmouth, the oldest endowed professorship at Dartmouth College. He taught as Professor of American Religious History at Columbia University for twenty-seven years before coming to Dartmouth in 2012.

Dr. Balmer has published more than a dozen books, including America’s Best Idea: The Separation of Church and State, Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter, God in the White House: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, and The Making of Evangelicalism: From Revivalism to Politics and Beyond. His second book, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, now in its fifth edition, was made into an award-winning, three-part documentary for PBS. Dr. Balmer wrote and hosted that series as well as a two-part series on creationism and a documentary on Billy Graham. He has lectured around the country in such venues as the Commonwealth Club of California and the Chautauqua Institution and, under the auspices of the State Department, in Austria and Lebanon.

Show notes:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/america-s-best-idea-the-separation-of-church-and-state-randall-balmer/10c3765c6955cd65?ean=9781586424145&next=t

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the private, digital-first National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of how religion has shaped America and how America has shaped religion. This includes the establishment of religious freedom in the United States Constitution’s Article VI and Bill of Rights religion clauses.

It is our hope that by the end of this episode, each of us will be equipped to be more effective stewards of religion’s role in the ongoing American experiment in self-government.

Season 4, Episode 10: American Chaplaincy – Part 2

Guest Bio

Professor Jacqueline Whitt is Chief Learning Officer for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs and Director of the Organizational Learning Unit (OLU) in the Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources for the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the Department of State. She is the author of Bringing God to Men: American Military Chaplains, Religion, and the Vietnam War.

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion.

Season 4, Episode 9 – History of Religious Freedom in the U.S. with Mark Valeri

Guest Bio

Professor Mark Valeri is the Reverend Priscilla Wood Neaves Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, the director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, and author of The Opening of the Protestant Mind: How Anglo-American Protestants Embraced Religious Liberty.

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the private, digital-first National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of how religion has shaped America and how America has shaped religion. This includes the establishment of religious freedom in the United States Constitution’s Article VI and Bill of Rights religion clauses.

Season 4, Episode 8 – American Religion: The Shakers

Guest Bio

Theresa Frey-Alexander is the Curator of Education and Interpretation at Shaker Heritage Society, the site of the first Shaker settlement, where she relishes bringing the history of the Shakers to life through innovative, multi-sensory exhibits and programs. She curated Ann Lee: One Woman’s Revolution, now on view. She holds a B.A. in History from Indiana University and a degree in Education from Siena University. She is also a musician, gardener, artist, and mother.

See:

• The Shaker Heritage Society
• Theresa Frey-Alexander’s recent presentation at the Religion and the American Founding conference
• Hancock Shaker Village video 
• Kens Burn documentary

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the private, digital-first National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of how religion has shaped America and how America has shaped religion. This includes the establishment of religious freedom in the United States Constitution’s Article VI and Bill of Rights religion clauses.

Season 4, Episode 7 – History of Religious Freedom in the U.S. with Michael McConnell

Guest Bio

Dr. Michael McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, and from 2002 to 2009 was Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He has briefed or argued many if not most of the religious freedom cases in the Supreme Court from the 1980s until now. Professor McConnell is the author of The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution, and co-author with Nathan Chapman of Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience.

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the private, digital-first National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of how religion has shaped America and how America has shaped religion. This includes the establishment of religious freedom in the United States Constitution’s Article VI and Bill of Rights religion clauses.

• https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/matthew-avery-sutton/chosen-land/9781541646339/
• Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/03/how-christian-nationalist-became-epithet/686279/
• NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/books/review/chosen-land-matthew-avery-sutton.html
• Christianity Today: https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/03/american-christianity-more-than-politics-chosen-land-sutton-review/

Season 4, Episode 6 – Christianity and the History of the United States of America

Guest Bio

Dr. Matthew Avery Sutton is the Berry Family Distinguished Professor in the Liberal Arts at Washington State University and has written many books besides this one, about various aspects of religion and U.S. history, including Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity ; Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War; and Faith in the New Millennium: The Future of Religion and American Politics. 

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the private, digital-first National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of how religion has shaped America and how America has shaped religion. This includes the establishment of religious freedom in the United States Constitution’s Article VI and Bill of Rights religion clauses.

Season 4, Episode 5 – History of Religious Freedom in the U.S. with Steven Green

Guest Bio

Steven K. Green is the Fred H. Paulus Professor of Law and Affiliated Professor of History and Religious Studies at Willamette University where he teaches courses in Constitutional Law, First Amendment, Legal History, Jurisprudence, and Education Law in the College of Law, and Legal History and American Religious History in the College of Arts & Sciences.

He is the author of more than 50 law review articles and book chapters, appearing in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, Cornell Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Emory Law Journal, and Boston College Law Review, among others. Green’s latest book is The Grand Collaboration: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Invention of American Religious Freedom, and the subject of this podcast episode.

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the private, digital-first National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion. This includes the establishment of religious freedom in the United States Constitution’s Article VI and Bill of Rights religion clauses.

Show notes:

Our Mission | Seamen’s Church Institute

https://seamenschurch.org/historical-resources/

Season 4, Episode 4 – History of the Seamen’s Church Institute

Guest Bio

The Reverend Mark Nestlehutt serves as the President and Executive Director of the Seamen’s Church Institute (SCI), the largest and most comprehensive mariner service agency in North America.

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the private, digital-first National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of how religion has shaped America and how America has shaped religion. This includes the establishment of religious freedom in the United States Constitution’s Article VI and Bill of Rights religion clauses.

Season 4, Episode 3 – Black Power, Jewish Politics in 20th Century America

Guest Bio

Marc Dollinger is Professor, Richard and Rhoda Goldman Chair, in the Department of Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University. He has a Ph.D. in history from UCLA and is the author of several books, including Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s, the basis of our discussion today. Dr. Dollinger’s research interests include American Jewish history, Jewish social responsibility, liberalism, Jews and public policy church/state separation, modern Jewish history and modern Jewish identity.

• https://jewish.sfsu.edu/prof-marc-dollinger-speaks-cnns-don-lemon-tonight

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the private, digital-first National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of how religion has shaped America and how America has shaped religion. This includes the establishment of religious freedom in the United States Constitution’s Article VI and Bill of Rights religion clauses.

Season 4, Episode 2 – History of Religious Freedom in the U.S. with Chris Beneke 

Guest Bio

Chris Beneke is Professor and Associate Dean of First Year Experience and the Bentley Core at Bentley University. His research interests include American religious history, history of religious toleration, baseball and American history and American intellectual history. Dr. Beneke is the author of many books, including Free Exercise: Religion, the First Amendment, and the Making of America and The Lively Experiment: Religious Toleration in America from Roger Williams to the Present.

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the private, digital-first National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of how religion has influenced America and how America has influenced religion. This includes the establishment of religious freedom in the United States Constitution’s Article VI and Bill of Rights religion clauses.

Season 4, Episode 1 – The Erie Canal and American Religion

Guest Bio

S.B. Rodríguez-Plate is a professor of religious studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York and author of many books including A History of Religion in 5 ½ Objects: Bringing the Spiritual to Its Senses, and Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World. S.B. investigates the ways people connect with physical objects through sense perception: the things we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch are what give people their spiritual dimension.

Matthew Smith is Visiting Professor of History and the Regional Director of Public Programming at Miami University of Ohio’s Hamilton, New York regional campus. Matthew’s research interests include American religious history, Appalachia, The Ohio Valley, and Trans-Atlantic immigration. Dr. Smith is the author of The Spires Still Point to Heaven: Cincinnati's Religious Landscape, 1788-1873

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the private, digital-first National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion. This includes the establishment of religious freedom in the United States Constitution’s Article VI and Bill of Rights religion clauses.

Season 3, Episode 37 – No god but God Twentieth Anniversary

Guest Bio

Reza Aslan is a renowned writer, commentator, professor, Emmy- and Peabody-nominated producer, and scholar of religions.  He is the author of numerous internationally bestselling books, including No god but God and the #1 New York Times Bestseller Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, currently in development at Fremantle Media with Pablo Larrain attached to direct. A former Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and recipient of the prestigious James Joyce Award, Aslan has helped craft the mythologies for Hollywood’s most acclaimed franchises, including Dune, Game of Thrones, and The Leftovers. In addition to his writing and production work, he has served as host and executive producer of CNN’s Believer and Rough Draft with Reza Aslan, and co-hosts the podcast Metaphysical Milkshake alongside Rainn Wilson. His latest book, An American Martyr in Persia, was nominated for the PEN/Jacqueline Beograd Weld Award.

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the private, digital-first National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion. This includes the establishment of religious freedom in the United States Constitution’s Article VI and Bill of Rights religion clauses.

• https://stlukesmuseum.org/
• https://stlukesmuseum.org/edu-blog/letter-from-president-eisenhower-to-hsl/

Season 3, Episode 36 – St. Luke’s Historic Church and Museum

Guest Bio

John Ericson is the Executive Director and Site Historian for St Luke's Historic Church & Museum in Smithfield Virginia. He produces a podcast about the early American religious experience called History from the Old Brick Church. Mr. Ericson has expertise in the history of the Established Church of England in the Colonies, as well in the dissenting groups such as Pilgrims (Brownists), Puritans, and Quakers. He has also studied how the Established Church sought to coerce the Indigenous and African populations in Virginia through the Brafferton and Bray Schools as well as through legislation.

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the private, digital-first National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of how religion has shaped America and how America has shaped religion. This includes the establishment of religious freedom in the United States Constitution’s Article VI and Bill of Rights religion clauses.

Additional resources:

• Judith Weisenfeld, New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration
• Ula Y. Taylor, The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam
• Edward Curtis IV, Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960-1975
• Erdmann Doane Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit"
• James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Season 3, Episode 35 – American Religion: The Nation of Islam

Guest Bio

Dr. Joseph Stuart is a scholar of African American history, particularly of the relationship between race, masculinity, civil rights, and religion in twentieth-century Black Freedom Movements. He has a B.A. in American Studies from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in U.S. History from the University of Utah. His forthcoming book manuscript examines the Nation of Islam’s racial and masculine ideologies to understand how and why some Black American groups opposed integration in the mid-twentieth century United States. The project traces the Nation of Islam’s founding from its origins in Great Depression Detroit to its schism following the Elijah Muhammad's death in 1975 and its “restoration” under Louis Farrakhan.

Joseph's research has been published in academic journals and edited collections, including Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, American Quarterly, the Journal of Mormon History, and Religion & Politics. He is also a contributing research associate to the Century of Black Mormons Project. He has hosted and produced podcasts for the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and the New Books Network.

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the private, digital-first National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion. This includes the establishment of religious freedom in the United States Constitution’s Article VI and Bill of Rights religion clauses.

Where has the concept of “the Antichrist” appeared in American history and how can this help us understand what happened in Michigan?

Season 3, Episode 34 – Special Edition: The Antichrist in American History

Guest Bios

Dr. Matt Sutton is the Berry Family Distinguished Professor in the Liberal Arts at Washington State University and author of American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism. His new book Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity will be published in early 2026.

Dr. Christopher Blythe is assistant professor of English at Brigham Young University and, importantly, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Both have expertise in Christian theology as it relates to the United States of America.

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion.

Season 3, Episode 33 – The Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Guest Bio

Arnold E. Resnicoff was born in Washington, DC and attended Dartmouth College where he studied drama. Arnie then served a tour in Vietnam, including as part of "Operation Game Warden," the campaign to keep the rivers free of Viet Cong infiltrators. After the war he became a rabbi then a chaplain in the U.S. Navy, serving in that position for twenty-five years. Chaplain Resnicoff was part of the small group of veterans who worked to create the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, delivering the closing prayer at its 1982 dedication. He was in Beirut on that fateful day when the Marine barracks were bombed on October 23rd, 1983. His eyewitness report, written at the request of the White House, was read in full by President Ronald Reagan as a keynote speech to the 20,000 attendees of Jerry Falwell's "Baptist Fundamentalism '84" convention. Arnie was the first Jewish chaplain to attend the Naval War College, and the first chaplain of any faith to teach a course there (or at any military war college), "Faith and Force: Religion, War, and Peace." He served as Command Chaplain for the US European Command, the "top chaplain" for US chaplains of all faiths in all branches of the armed forces in all of Europe and most of Africa. Arnie has offered more prayers to open sessions of the House and Senate as guest chaplain than any other rabbi in history. After retirement from the Navy, he served as National Director for Interreligious Affairs for the American Jewish Committee, and Special Assistant for Values and Vision to the Secretary and Chief-of-Staff of the U.S. Air Force, a position that carried with it the military equivalent rank of brigadier general. 

Arnie gave a prayer at the November 13, 1982 Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which you can watch here: https://www.c-span.org/clip/public-affairs-event/user-clip-1982-vietnam-veterans-memorial-dedication-closing-prayer/3724411

Jim Knotts is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF), the nonprofit organization that built The Wall in 1982. He is an Air Force veteran of the Persian Gulf War and a graduate of the Air Force Academy. For the past 10 years, he has led the efforts at VVMF to honor the service and sacrifices of Vietnam veterans. Jim previously worked in industry at Lockheed Martin headquarters, where he was Director of Corporate Citizenship, including philanthropy and community outreach, and Director of Web Communications. During his almost ten years in the Air Force, his career spanned service in the Persian Gulf War, at the headquarters of U.S. Southern Command, and in the Pentagon on the Office of the Secretary of Defense Staff.

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion.

Season 3, Episode 32: Religion and Rock n Rol

Guest Bio

Randall J. Stephens is professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo and is a historian of religion, conservatism, the South, environmentalism, and popular culture and is the author of several books including The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South and The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ’n’ Roll. Dr. Stephens received his BA in History at Mid America Nazarene College and his PhD in American History from the University of Florida.

In the 1990s Randall was part of a band called Jetenderpaul. This is the AllMusic link to the band: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/jetenderpaul-mn0000346797

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion.

The first episode of this multi-episode series about chaplaincy in America beings with Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff discussing his career as a chaplain in the United States Navy, which intersected with important and meaningful events in the nation’s history.

Season 3, Episode 31: American Chaplaincy – Part 1

Guest Bio

Arnold E. Resnicoff was born in Washington, DC and attended Dartmouth College where he studied drama. Arnie then served a tour in Vietnam, including as part of "Operation Game Warden," the campaign to keep the rivers free of Viet Cong infiltrators. After the war he became a rabbi then a chaplain in the U.S. Navy, serving in that position for twenty-five years. Chaplain Resnicoff was part of the small group of veterans who worked to create the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, delivering the closing prayer at its 1982 dedication. He was in Beirut on that fateful day when the Marine barracks were bombed on October 23rd 1983. His eyewitness report, written at the request of the White House, was read in full by President Ronald Reagan as a keynote speech to the 20,000 attendees of Jerry Falwell's "Baptist Fundamentalism '84" convention. Arnie was the first Jewish chaplain to attend the Naval War College, and the first chaplain of any faith to teach a course there (or at any military war college), "Faith and Force: Religion, War, and Peace." He served as Command Chaplain for the US European Command, the "top chaplain" for US chaplains of all faiths in all branches of the armed forces in all of Europe and most of Africa. Arnie has offered more prayers to open sessions of the House and Senate as guest chaplain than any other rabbi in history. After retirement from the Navy, he served as National Director for Interreligious Affairs for the American Jewish Committee, and Special Assistant for Values and Vision to the Secretary and Chief-of-Staff of the U.S. Air Force, a position that carried with it the military equivalent rank of brigadier general. 

http://www.resnicoff.net/

Rabbi Resnicoff’s 1982 prayer at the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Rabbi Resnicoff’s report (and speech) to the White House about the Marine barracks bombing in 1983.

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion.

Season 3, Episode 30: The Women and Men of American Religion. Story 8: Roger Williams

Guest Bio

Dr. Carrington-Farmer is a Professor of History at Roger Williams University, where she specializes in early American History. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2010, and she has a keen research interest in dissent in seventeenth-century New England. Her book, Roger Williams and His World, sets Roger Williams in his wider Atlantic world context. She has published book chapters on two seventeenth-century dissenters, see: “Thomas Morton” in: Atlantic Lives: Biographies that Cross the Ocean and “Roger Williams and the Architecture of Religious Liberty,” in Law and Religion and the Liberal State. Building on her interest in Roger Williams, she has published an article on his wife, Mary Williams, entitled: “More than Roger’s Wife: Mary Williams and the Founding of Providence.” In the New England Quarterly.

Listeners are welcome to use the code ROGERWILLIAMS20 for 20% off their purchase from our website. Here is a link to the product page: https://broadviewpress.com/product/roger-williams-and-his-world/

The full interview can be found Full Interview. 

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion.

Sacred Rebellion:

https://www.congregationallibrary.org/sacred-rebellion

The Congregational Library & Archives presents a new in-person exhibition, Sacred Rebellion: Congregationalists in Revolutionary Massachusetts. The exhibition highlights the stories of Massachusetts Congregationalists drawn from the CLA’s important collections. 

By the time the war began, many Congregationalists had embraced a theological justification for war and revolution. They believed that God favored them and that their cause was a morally justified, sacred rebellion. Through sermons, books, poems, songs, and letters, Congregationalists shared their stories, reflected on their moral obligations to each other, and debated questions of liberty and loyalty. But consensus was elusive, and implementation proved difficult and unsatisfactory to many, especially those on the margins. These discussions shaped the legacy of Congregationalism and the way the Revolutionary War is remembered today, 250 years later. 

Last year's digital exhibit, Religion of Revolution: https://congregationallibrary.quartexcollections.com/online-exhibits/revolution

Call For Papers for an upcoming symposium on religion at the Library that might be of interest to your listeners (deadline extended to June 1): https://www.congregationallibrary.org/religions-revolution-symposium

Season 3, Episode 29: Sacred Rebellion – Congregationalists in Revolutionary Massachusetts

Guest Bio

Kyle B. Roberts was appointed as the Executive Director of the Congregational Library & Archives in 2022. He received his BA in American Studies from Williams College and his PhD in History from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a scholar of Atlantic World religion, print, and library history, and is the author of Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783-1860 and the co-editor, with Stephen Schloesser, of Crossings and Dwellings: Restored Jesuits, Women Religious, American Experience 1814-2014. Kyle is an accomplished public historian and digital humanist whose collaborative projects include the Jesuit Libraries Provenance Project.

Tricia Peone is the Project Director of New England's Hidden Histories at the Congregational Library and Archives. She previously worked at Historic New England, where she was a research scholar for the Recovering New England’s Voices project. She has also previously worked as the public programs director at New Hampshire Humanities, a university lecturer teaching classes on the Salem witch trials, early New England, and public history, and as a researcher for cultural heritage organizations. Her scholarship focuses on early modern magic and witchcraft and her work on these subjects has appeared in journals, books, blogs, and on radio and television. She holds a PhD in history from the University of New Hampshire with a specialization in the early modern Atlantic world and history of science.

Podcast Support

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Religion in the American Experience is a podcast of the National Museum of American Religion, which tells the story of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion.

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Season 3, Episode 28: American Religion - Methodism

Guest Bio

Dr. Ashely Boggan is the General Secretary of the United Methodist Church’s General Commission on Archives and History. In this role, she ensures that The UMC understands its past, in order to envision a more equitable future for all Methodists. Ashley earned her PhD from Drew Theological School’s Graduate Division of Religion, specializing in both Methodist/Wesleyan Studies and Women’s/Gender Studies. She earned an M.A. from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, specializing in American Religious History. Dr. Boggan is a lay member of the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference and the daughter of two ordained United Methodist ministers. Her Methodist lineage dates beyond this, back to the early 19th century when her great-great-great grandfathers were Methodist circuit-riders. 

Background

Methodist churches are everywhere in the United States with their easily recognizable sign, the “Cross and Flame”. Methodism and those that are affiliated with it have influenced the country in profound ways. First arriving in the colonies in the decades before the Revolutionary War, Methodists and the American narrative are bound up together.

The film “Conclave”, released in the fall of 2024, features the Catholic church’s process of electing a new pope, which process is called a conclave. In the fictional movie, the cardinal in charge of this conclave finds himself investigating secrets and scandals about several of the Cardinals who were possibly close to becoming the next pope.

The response from the Catholic community has been mixed. John Mulderig of the Catholic OSV News said that "rival viewpoints within the church are caricatured with a broad brush ... and the deck is predictably stacked in favor of those who advocate change". He warned that "all moviegoers committed to the church's creeds will want to approach this earnest, visually engaging but manipulative—and sometimes sensationalist—production with caution".  On the other hand, the progressive National Catholic Reporter praised the film, calling it "a compelling and ecclesial call for a renewed spiritual stewardship characterized by humility, meekness, and, curiously, doubt".

In that spirit, we asked a church historian who has studied papal conclaves to share thoughts about the process of choosing a pope against the background of this movie.

We have invited Dr. Christopher Bellitto to discuss this with us. Dr. Bellitto is a medievalist, a church historian, and Professor of History at Kean University in Union, NJ, where he teaches courses in ancient and medieval history. He is a frequent public speaker and media commentator on church history and contemporary Catholicism. His book, Humility: the Secret History of a Lost Virtue, was published in 2023 and can be purchased here.

This is the second Religion in the American Experience episode responding to recent movies with a main focus on something religious. The other episode is an interview with a church historian of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who addressed American Primeval.

Today Méli Solomon of Boston, Massachusetts joins to tell us about her own religious history. You can see more about Méli and her work here: https://www.talkingwithgodproject.org/team 

Religion in the American Experience is the podcast of The National Museum of American Religion (https://www.nmar.org). This private, digital-first museum explores what America has done to religion and what religion has done to America, which includes the establishment of religious freedom defined by the Constitution's Article VI and First Amendment religion clauses.

Advice for podcast episodes is provided by Dr. Lauren Turek (https://laurenturek.com/), Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Technical audio and video assistance is provided by Dr. Randall Stephens (https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/randalls/), a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Kenneth Woodward was hired as a journalist by the Omaha Sun newspaper in 1962. In 1964, he was named Religion Editor for Newsweek and remained in that position until 2002. He also served as the Ideas section editor from 1974 through 1978, and was named Senior Writer in 1988. After his retirement as Religion editor, he continued as a contributing writer to Newsweek, and as Regent's Lecturer at University of California, Santa Barbara.. He is the Writer-in-residence at the Lumen Christi Institute of the University of Chicago.

In his book Getting Religion, which was published in 2016, he shares unique views and perspectives from his journalistic perch of the American religious landscape in the latter-half of the 20th century.

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Season 3, Episode 24: American Religion: The Seventh-day Adventist Church

Guest Bio

Dr. David Trim is the Director of the Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research for the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, based in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. Born to missionary parents in Bombay, India, David was raised in Sydney, Australia, and educated in the United Kingdom. He has a BA from Newbold College and a PhD from King’s College London, University of London. For ten years he taught undergraduate courses in history and graduate courses in missiology at his alma mater, Newbold College, in England, and then for two years held the Walter C. Utt Chair of History at Pacific Union College in California. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 18 books, and has additionally published eighty scholarly articles and book chapters. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and is an adjunct professor of church history at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary.

Background

The Seventh-day Adventist Church is one of the few religions founded in the United States, coming into existence during the 19th century’s Second Great Awakening. Today it has approximately a million members-plus in the United States and upwards of 21 million members outside the U.S. The Seventh-day Adventist Church is one of the fastest growing Christian denominations in the world. On today’s episode we will explore the history of this home-grown American church, what its beliefs are, what roles it has played in the unfolding of the American project, and what roles it plays today on America’s dynamic religious landscape.

Scholarly support provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Technical audio and video assistance provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

Season 3, Episode 23: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Responds to “American Primeval.”

Guest Bio

Dr. Matthew C. Godfrey is a general editor of the Joseph Smith Papers and a senior historian in the Church History Department, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He holds a PhD in American and public history from Washington State University. Matt has authored or coedited several books, including five volumes in the Joseph Smith Papers, The Earth Will Appear as the Garden of Eden: Essays on Mormon Environmental History, and Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907-1921. Instagram handle: @matacious.

Background

On January 9th, 2025, Netflix released “American Primeval”, a series that uses the Mountain Meadows Massacre in southern Utah as a lens to explore frictions between Latter-day Saints and other cultures in the Utah Territory during the latter half of the 19th century.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released a statement addressing the series, which reads in part:

"A recently released streaming series presents a fictionalized interpretation of events in mid-19th century Utah. While historical fiction can be illuminating, this drama is dangerously misleading.

Brigham Young, a revered prophet and courageous pioneer, is, by any historical standard, egregiously mischaracterized as a villainous, violent fanatic. Other individuals and groups are also depicted in ways that reinforce stereotypes that are both inaccurate and harmful. As to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which the series inaccurately portrays as reflective of a whole faith group, the Church has long acknowledged and condemned this horrific tragedy. It has also taken significant steps to uncover and share the full truth of what happened and promote healing. The problem with such deceptive, graphic and sensationalized storytelling is that it not only obscures reality and hinders genuine understanding but can foster animosity, hate and even violence."

The National Museum of American Religion felt it important to provide an opportunity for the main subject in the series, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to share its understanding of the historical record around Brigham Young, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and the church’s efforts to establish itself in the 19th-century Great Basin.

Today Trey Ferguson of Homestead, Florida and joins to tell us about his own religious history. You can see more about Trey here.

Religion in the American Experience is the podcast of The National Museum of American Religion. This private, digital-first museum explores what America has done to religion and what religion has done to America, which includes the establishment of religious freedom as a governing principle, defined by the Constitution's Article VI and First Amendment religion clauses.

Advice advice for podcast episodes is provided by Dr. Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Technical audio and video assistance is provided by Dr. Randall Stephens, a Professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo.

The Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center (FPHC) is the largest Pentecostal archives in the world. Located in the National Office of the Assemblies of God USA, the FPHC collects printed materials, oral histories, artifacts, photographs, and memorabilia documenting the Assemblies of God and the broader Pentecostal and charismatic movements, spanning the globe. The FPHC has become an important hub for Pentecostal history and research, preserving and promoting Pentecostal testimonies and identity so that future generations can know the works of God. Countless church leaders, scholars, students, people in the pew, and other researchers have used its collections.

Darrin Rodgers is the director of the Center and has an M.A. in Theological Studies from Assemblies of God Theological Seminary and a J.D. from the University of North Dakota School of Law. He came to the FPHC from Fuller Theological Seminary, where he served at the David du Plessis Archive and the McAlister Library. He has authored Northern Harvest, a history of Pentecostalism in North Dakota, and numerous articles in books and journals. His research interests include Pentecostal origins, ethnic aspects of Pentecostalism's development, and the intersection of Christianity and culture.

Ruthie Oberg is an events speaker with the Center and is an ordained Assemblies of God minister, having served in senior and associate pastoral roles for 25 years. Ruthie speaks at national conferences, local churches, has produced a daily radio program in the Omaha market. Her articles have appeared in the Pentecostal Evangel, Enrichment, Influence, and Assemblies of God Heritage, and she is a regular contributor to “This week in AG History” for AG News. She is also a past chair of the Library and Research Committee of the Society for Pentecostal Studies.

For us the question is, in what ways did religion – one of the greatest and most ubiquitous forces in American history – react to the Great Depression? Understanding this will help us comprehend religion’s role in the American project, equipping us to be perpetuate and perfect it into the 21st century.   

As part of our multi-episode series about religion in the Great Depression, Dr. Jonathan Ebel will share the story of New Deal government camps for migrant workers in California and what he calls “the religion of reform.”

Dr. Jonathan Ebel is a professor of religion at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago and has B.S. from Harvard. Professor Ebel's research program involves religion and war, religion and violence, and lay theologies of economic hardship all within the American context. He is the author of several books including From Dust They Came: Government Camps and the Religion of Reform in New Deal California, G.I. Messiahs: Soldiering, War, and American Civil Religion, Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War, and is the co-editor of From Jeremiad to Jihad: Religion, Violence, and America. He is currently at work on a religious history of American warfare in five weapons.

For us the question is, in what ways did religion – one of the greatest and most ubiquitous forces in American history – react to the Great Depression? Understanding this will help us comprehend religion’s role in the American project, equipping us to be perpetuate and perfect it more successfully into the 21st century.   

As part of our multi-episode series about religion in the Great Depression, Dr. Lisa Tait, Dr. Ben Park, and Dr. Matt Bowman are here to tell the story of how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints responded to and was changed by the Great Depression.

Dr. Lisa Olsen Tait works in the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is a historian and writer specializing in women’s history. Dr. Tait received a PhD in American Literature and Women’s Studies at the University of Houston. Her dissertation and several subsequent publications are on Latter-day Saint women’s response to the gendered and generational crises of the 1890s. Dr. Tait’s long-term project is a biography of Susa Young Gates, one of Brigham Young’s daughters.

Dr. Benjamin Park is an associate professor of history at Same Houston State University where he studies the intersections between religion, culture, and politics in America, mostly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and often within a broader Atlantic context. He received a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge. He has written several books including American Nationalisms: Conceiving Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783-1833, Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier, and American Zion: A New History of Mormonism. Dr. Park currently serves as an associate editor of Mormon Studies Review.

Dr. Matthew Bowman is the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies, with a joint appointment in history and religion, at Claremont Graduate University. He received a PhD in American History from Georgetown University. Dr. Bowman is a specialist in American religious history, with particular interests in Mormonism, new religious movements, and the development of the concept of “religion” in the United States. He is the author or co-editor of The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith, Women and Mormonism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, and Christian: The Politics of a Word in America. Dr. Bowman is currently serving as co-editor of the University of Illinois Press series Introductions to Mormon Thought.

Today we will get to know the life and times of Abraham Joshua Heschel, perhaps best known by the American public as the rabbi who walked alongside Rev. Martin Luther King in the famous protest march in the spring of 1965. One renown scholar of American religion wrote this: “On college and university campuses, at Christian seminaries as well as Jewish rabbinical assemblies, at colloquies on race relations and in the corridors of power, he spoke on the sensitive and difficult problems of the day in the best tradition of the Western conscience and of its biblical roots.”

To help us do this, we have with us Susannah Heschel, the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and chair of the Jewish Studies Program and a faculty member of the Religion Department.

Dr. Heschel received her A.B. at Trinity College and Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. Her scholarship focuses on Jewish and Protestant thought during the 19th and 20th centuries, including the history of biblical scholarship, Jewish scholarship on Islam, and the history of anti-Semitism. Her numerous publications include Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus, which won a National Jewish Book Award, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. Heschel has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Frankfurt and Cape Town as well as Princeton, and she is the recipient of numerous grants, including from the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, and a yearlong Rockefeller fellowship at the National Humanities Center. She has received many honors, including the Mendelssohn Prize of the Leo Baeck Institute, and five honorary doctorates from universities in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, and Germany. Currently she is a Guggenheim Fellow and is writing a book on the history of European Jewish scholarship on Islam. She is an elected member of the American Society for the Study of Religion and the American Academy for Jewish Research. 

And, importantly, Susannah is the daughter of our subject - Abraham Joshua Heschel.

For us, the question is, in what ways did religion – one of the greatest and most ubiquitous forces in our history – react to the Great Depression? Understanding this will help us better comprehend and perpetuate the American project, including the religion clauses in the U.S. Constitution: “Congress shall make no longer law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof.”

As part of our multi-episode series about religion in the Great Depression, Dr. Randall Stephens is joining us to talk about the Protestant response to the Dust Bowl.

Dr. Randall J. Stephens is professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo. He previously taught at Northumbria University (Newcastle upon Tyne) and Eastern Nazarene College (Quincy, Massachusetts). He is a historian of religion, conservatism, the South, environmentalism, and popular culture and is the author of several books including The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South and The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ’n’ Roll , (look for a “Religion in the American Experience” episode focused on this fascinating topic!) and was editor of Recent Themes in American Religious History. Specific to our discussion today, he is the author of an article that came out in the October 2023 issue of Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture: “The Dust Bowl, the Depression, and American Protestant Responses to Environmental Devastation.” In 2011-12, he was a Fulbright Roving Scholar in Norway. Dr. Stephens received his BA in History at Mid America Nazarene College and his PhD in American History from the University of Florida.

For us, the question is, in what ways did religion – one of the greatest and most ubiquitous forces in our history – react to the Great Depression? Understanding this will help us better comprehend and perpetuate the American project, including the religion clauses in the U.S. Constitution: "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States" and “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof.” 

As part of our multi-episode series about religion in the Great Depression, Dr. Alison Greene and Dr. Randall Stephens are joining us to talk about the story of FDR’s clergy letters.

Dr. Alison Collis Greene is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Candler School of Theology at Emory University and is an affiliated faculty member in the Department of History at Emory College of Arts and Sciences. She teaches United States religious history, with interests in American religions as they relate to politics, wealth and poverty, race and ethnicity, the environment, and the modern rural South. She is author of No Depression in Heaven: The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Transformation of Religion in the Delta, as well as a number of essays and articles on modern United States religious history in both scholarly and popular outlets. Dr. Greene is also on the editorial board of the Journal of Southern Religion.

Dr. Randall J. Stephens is professor of American and British Studies at the University of Oslo. He is a historian of religion, conservatism, the South, environmentalism, and popular culture and is the author of several books including The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South and The Devil's Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock 'n' Roll, and was editor of Recent Themes in American Religious History. Specific to our discussion today, he is the author of an article that came out in the October 2023 issue of Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture: “The Dust Bowl, the Depression, and American Protestant Responses to Environmental Devastation.”

Valerie Cooper is associate professor of religion and society and black church studies at Duke Divinity School. Using historical and theological methodologies, her wide-ranging scholarship examines issues of religion, race, politics, and popular culture. She has published essays on African American evangelicals (particularly in Pentecostalism and the Holiness Movement), on African Americans’ use of the Bible, and with political scientist Corwin Smidt, co-authored an essay on the roles of religion and race in the 2008 election of President Barack Obama. Her article on “Black Theology” is forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Political Theology.

Her book, Word, Like Fire: Maria Stewart, the Bible, and the Rights of African Americans, analyzes the role of biblical hermeneutics in the thought of Maria Stewart, a pioneering 19th-century African American woman theologian and political speaker. Cooper is currently working on Segregated Sundays, a book evaluating the successes and failures of the racial reconciliation efforts of Christian congregations and ministries from the 1990s to the present.

Dale Coulter is an ordained minister in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) and professor of historical theology at Pentecostal Theological Seminary. He studied the Middle Ages while completing his DPhil at the University of Oxford. Much of his work has centered on the twelfth century abbey of St. Victor, having published a monograph on Richard of St. Victor. His most recent work is a collection of essays he co-edited titled, The Spirit, the Affections, and the Christian Tradition. He has authored a popular work on holiness and occasionally writes at the online platform for the journal First Things, which is published by the Institute for Religion and Public Life. He has also written articles for outlets such as The Washington Post, Christianity Today, The Stream, Keryx, and Seed Bed. He is a past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. Dale has also served as co-editor of PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies (2010-2015) and currently serves on its editorial board. He is also involved in ecumenical discussions between Orthodox and Pentecostals as well as a participating member of Evangelicals and Catholics Together. 

For us the question is, in what ways did religion – one of the greatest and most ubiquitous forces in American history – react to the Great Depression? Understanding this will help us comprehend religion’s role in the American project, equipping us to be perpetuate and perfect it more successfully into the 21st century.

As part of our multi-episode series about religion in the Great Depression, Dr. Alison Greene is here to help us understand how the Depression and the New Deal changed the southern Protestant establishment in the Mississippi Delta region. It is a fascinating story.

Dr. Alison Collis Greene is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Candler School of Theology at Emory University, and is an affiliated faculty member in the Department of History at Emory College of Arts and Sciences. She teaches United States religious history, with interests in American religions as they relate to politics, wealth and poverty, race and ethnicity, the environment, and the modern rural South. She is author of No Depression in Heaven: The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Transformation of Religion in the Delta (Oxford, 2016), as well as a number of essays and articles on modern United States religious history in both scholarly and popular outlets. Dr. Greene is also on the editorial board of the Journal of Southern Religion.

To answer these and related questions, Tommy Kidd is here with us! Dr. Thomas S. Kidd is research professor of church history at Midwestern Baptist Seminary in Kansas City, and a senior research scholar at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion. Kidd completed a Ph.D. in history at the University of Notre Dame, where he worked with the historian of religion George Marsden. He received a B.A. and M.A. at Clemson University. He is a prolific author and has written, among other books, Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh – the focus of today’s interview; Baptists in America: A History (with Barry Hankins), George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father, and American Christians and Islam. He has written for outlets including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Dr. Kidd teaches courses on colonial America, the American Revolution, and American religious history.

To help us understand this, we have with us today Kristy Nabhan-Warren, Professor and the inaugural V.O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Chair in Catholic Studies at the University of Iowa, and author of Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland. Kristy received her PhD from the University of Indiana; her research interests include American Religions; Ethnographic approaches to the study of religion; Catholic Studies; Latinx Studies. She is committed to making scholarship meaningful to non-academics as well as academics, and prides herself on writing for a wide audience. She works hard to stay true to her working class and Midwestern roots. She embraces a Humanities for the Public Good approach to her research, writing, and dissemination of information.

Today’s guest who will help us do this, is Paul Harvey, Distinguished Professor History and Presidential Teaching Scholar at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He researches, writes, and teaches in the field of American history from the 16th century to the present. Paul is the author of Martin Luther King: A Religious Life, Howard Thurman and the Disinherited: A Religious Biography, Christianity and Race in the American South: A History, and Bounds of Their Habitation: Religion and Race in American History. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

To understand its history, we’re very fortunate today to have with us two outstanding scholars of religion and religious history: Dr. Catherine Brekus and Dr. Mark Edwards. Dr. Brekus is the Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America at Harvard University and a prolific author, whose books include Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740-1845 and Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelicalism in Early America. She is currently working on a book about the relationship between American nationalism and Christianity.

Dr. Edwards is professor of US history and politics at Spring Arbor University in Michigan. He too is a prolific author. His books include The Right of the Protestant Left: God’s Totalitarianism, which offers a new view of Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, and Walter Lippmann: American Skeptic, American Pastor.

Dr. Benjamin Wetzel is an Assistant Professor of History at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. Previously he was a postdoctoral research associate at the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. Dr. Wetzel received his PhD in History in 2016 from the University of Notre Dame and is the author of two books: American Crusade: Christianity, Warfare, and National Identity, 1860-1920 (the topic of today’s interview) and Theodore Roosevelt: Preaching from the Bully Pulpit. 

He was also the first “born again” Christian elected to office.

In order to better understand how religion influenced Jimmy Carter, we have with us today Randall Balmer, the John Phillips Chair in Religion at Dartmouth and a prize-winning historian, Emmy Award nominee, and author of Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter, a religious biography of the former president. Dr. Balmer earned the Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1985 and taught as Professor of American Religious History at Columbia University for twenty-seven years before coming to Dartmouth in 2012. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including God in the White House: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, The Making of Evangelicalism: From Revivalism to Politics and Beyond, and Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America. Dr. Balmer is also an ordained Episcopal priest.

We’ll answer questions at about the fifty minute mark, so submit them in the chat window.

We have with us today the following experts:

• Ashley Dreff is the General Secretary of the General Commission on Archives and History of the United Methodist Church. Previously she was an Assistant Professor of Religion and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at High Point University. 

• Dr. Bradley Hauff is Episcopal Church Missioner for Indigenous Ministries and a member of the Presiding Bishop’s staff. As Missioner for Indigenous Ministries, Rev. Hauff is responsible for enabling and empowering Indigenous peoples and their respective communities within the Episcopal Church. He holds a Master of Divinity from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary & a Doctor of Clinical Psychology from Minnesota School of Professional Psychology of Argosy University.

• Farina King, is of English-American descent, born for Kinyaa'anii, or the Towering House Clan, of Dine' (Navajo). She is a citizen of the Navajo Nation. & Associate Professor of History at Northeastern State University in Talequah, homelands of the Cherokee Nation and United Keetowah Band of Cherokees

• Brenda J. Child is Northrop Professor of American Studies and former chair of the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940. Dr. Child served as a member of the board of trustees of the National Museumof the American Indian-Smithsonian. She was born on the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation in northern Minnesota

• Christine Diindiisi McCleave is an Indigenous consultant, and a doctoral student in Indigenous Studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks with a focus on healing historical trauma through the use of traditional plant medicines. She is the former CEO of the National Native American Boarding Schooling Healing Coalition

Melissa Matthes can help us all better comprehend what sermons at times of national crisis have meant for America. She is Professor of Government at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, and author of When Sorrow Comes: The Power of Sermons from Pearl Harbor to Black Lives Matter. Dr. Matthes received a Ph.D. from the University of California Santa Cruz and a Master of Divinity from Yale University.

We guarantee that our time together today will help all of us better understand what religion has done to America, and what America has done to religion, and we trust that as a result, listeners will come to better understand how revolutionary and indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle, is, to the United States and its future.

Daniel graduated from East High School in Denver, went to Harvard as an undergraduate, and received his Ph.D. in history at the University of California, Berkeley in 1966. and is an American historian who specializes in the early national period of U.S. history, with a particular interest in its intellectual and religious dimensions.

Learn about the influence of religious on Daniel’s life, and understand more about what religion has done to Americans, and what Americans have done to religion.

From the perspective of The National Museum of American Religion, we want to know more about the roles that religion played in the story of slavery and its aftermath.

To do this, we have with us today Teddy R. Reeves, curator of religion at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Mr. Reeves is also a producer, digital theologian, and a fashion and art enthusiast. He earned his B.A. from Hampton University, his Master of Divinity from Princeton Seminary and is currently a PhD candidate at Fordham University.

In 2018 Teddy created a web-based talk-show series for the Museum entitled “gOD-talk: Black Millennials and Faith Conversation”, which explores the dynamic ways Black millennials are engaging with faith in the 21st century. He is a sought-after public speaker, teacher, facilitator and proclaimer.

To do another deep dive into just one aspect of this fascinating and meaningful subject, we have as our guest Benjamin Zeller, Associate Professor of Religion and Chair of both Religion and Islamic World Studies at Lake Forest College. His research interests include religion in America, religion in culture, religion and science and new religious movements. He is the author of Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion and Prophets and Protons: New Religious Movements and Science in Late Twentieth-Century America. 

For our discussion today, we are looking at his chapter “Quasi-religious American Foodways: The Cases of Vegetarianism and Locovorism” from the book Religion, Food & Eating in North America, edited by Benjamin Zeller, Marie Dallam, Reid Neilson, and Nora Rubel.

Her father served families as a social worker for more than 30 years. Kim's mom, a retired nurse and Professor of Nursing, served as a community nurse for economically disadvantaged families living with Sickle Cell disease.

After graduating from Furman University, Kim volunteered as an EMT and led her colleagues at Emory's Candler School of Theology in advocating for Criminal Justice Reform in Georgia.

Upon receiving her Master of Divinity, Kim commenced her vocation as an Episcopal priest. During ten years of ministry, she served as college chaplain, a nationally renowned consultant and preacher, a parish priest and a social justice advocate. 

In 2018, the Georgia House of Representatives commended her for her "tireless efforts on behalf of the disenfranchised, disenchanted, and dispossessed" (GA House Resolution 1188).

To better comprehend what is going on between religion and economics, we have with us today Professor Ben M. Friedman, the William Joseph Maier Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University, and author of Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Friedman has also written and/or edited fourteen other books, and more than 150 articles in professional journals, aimed primarily at economists and economic policymakers. His two other general interest books have been The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth and Day of Reckoning: The Consequences of American Economic Policy Under Reagan and After.

We guarantee that our time together today will help all of us better understand what religion has done to America, and what America has done to religion, and we trust that as a result, listeners will come to better understand how revolutionary and indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle, is, to the United States and its future.

Join us in building the “digital first” National Museum of American Religion by donating at storyofamericanreligion.org/contribute, where you can receive a free gift for a donation of $200 or more.

This afternoon we have a fantastic panel of scholars who will, in an hour!, help us do this, or at least scratch the surface!

Dr. Vincent Lloyd is an Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Theories & Methods of Culture, Director of Africana Studies at Villanova University, and co-author with Joshua Dubler, of Break Every Yoke: Religion, Justice and the Abolition of Prisons.

Dr. Jennifer Graber is a Professor in the History of Christianity and Interim Director of Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and author of The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons and Religion in Antebellum America.

Dr. Andrew Skotnicki is a Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College and author of Conversion and the Rehabilitation of the Penal System: A Theological Rereading of Criminal Justice and of the forthcoming book Mental Illness, Prophecy and Incarceration: Injustice, Insight and Insanity.

Today to help us at least begin to uncover some of the relationships between religion and environmentalism, is Mark Stoll, professor of history at Texas Tech University, and author of Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism. Mr. Stoll teaches about environmental history of the history of religion and is also the author of Protestantism, Capitalism, and Nature in America and co-editor with Dianne Glave, of To Love the Wind and the Rain: African Americans and Environmental History. He has a Ph.D. in history from The University of Texas at Austin.

We guarantee that our time together today will help all of us better understand what religion has done to America, and what America has done to religion, and we trust that as a result, listeners will come to better understand how revolutionary and indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle, is, to the United States and its future.

Join us in building The National Museum of American Religion in the nation's capital, to open in 2026, on the 240th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's immortal words "Almighty God hath created the mind free", by donating at storyofamericanreligion.org/contribute.

Our middle and high school history classes, as well as the beautiful museums of the nation's capital, do not fully reveal this tale, which captures the most influential force in our history, for good and ill - the last great untold American story. 

Understand America as you never have before.

Mental health has a special place as seen through the lens of religion – the sicknesses one can’t see, the depression, the darkness, all things “of the soul” are things religion naturally addresses.

At the Museum, we believe it will be instructive for all of us to better understand how religion has seen and addressed mental health throughout U.S. history so that  we are better equipped to address the mental health challenges of our present moment.

This morning we have a fantastic panel of scholars:

Dr. Judith Weisenfeld, Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion at Princeton University. She is the author of Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in American Film, 1929-1949, African American Women and Christian Activism: New York’s Black YWCA, 1905-1945, and New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration. Her current research examines the intersections of psychiatry, race, and African American religion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries;

Dr. Andrew Walker-Cornetta, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on how religious communities have shaped the history of disability in the United States. In August, he will begin a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Georgia State University.

Dr. Barbara McClure, Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology and Practice at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University, and author of Emotions: Problems and Promise for Human Flourishing. Her primary interests lie primarily in the meaning of and means toward human flourishing, respecting both the fractured character of human nature and the religious impulse for wholeness and coherence;

Dr. Kameelah Rashad, Founder and President of Muslim Wellness Foundation (MWF) and the founding co-Director of the National Black Muslim COVID Coalition. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology and Muslim Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary;

And, Dr. Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez, Associate Professor of Religion at Temple University, and author of The Valiant Woman: The Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century American Culture. She is currently a Scattergood Fellow working on a book entitled Challenging the Great Physician: Christian Responses to the Rise of Psychiatry in America.

Religion has profoundly influenced the sweeping American narrative, from the times of the Indigenous peoples to the present. The start-up digital-first National Museum of American Religion is the nationally recognized center for presenting, interpreting, and educating the public about what religion has done to Americans and what Americans have done to religion. It invites all to explore the role of religion and the freedom that fuels it, in shaping the social, political, economic and cultural lives of Americans and thus America itself.

The podcast series "Religion in the American Experience" is releasing the first episode of its new program, “The Making of US: Lived Religion in America”, which collects and disseminates personal stories about religion’s influence on the lives of the nation’s citizens. It is through hearing these stories that we can better comprehend ourselves, our communities and the nation, and see more clearly how the American project can endure.

At the Museum we observed that, as usual, a colossal amount of energy, money, time, emotion, concern, debate, argument, Tweets, posts, letter-writing, editorializing, and protest were invested in the election and its outcome. America was all in. That is, Americans have a deep and meaningful allegiance to perfecting, preserving and perpetuating the American experiment in self-government. Some religious beliefs even tie into the country’s founding & purpose. At the same time, however, we also noted that while that patriotic allegiance is powerful, for a large percentage of Americans, perhaps no longer a majority – at least according to a very recent report, there is most likely something that commands a greater allegiance – and that would be their faith. Many faiths have end-times theologies, including Christianity, which believes in an approaching end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ. So, it occurred to us that religious beliefs about the end of the world may play a large but hidden role in our politics – past, present and future.  

If we can understand some of the beliefs about the end of the world and their effects on political behavior, we will be better equipped as citizens trying to see to the success of the American project in the 21st century.

Today we have a fantastic panel of scholars who will, in an hour!, help us scrape the surface, maybe do a deep dive or two:

• Matthew Sutton, the Berry Family Distinguished Professor in the Liberal Arts at Washington State and author of American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism
• Matt Harper, Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies at Mercer University and author of End of Days
• Christopher Blythe, Research Associate at Brigham Young University’s Maxwell Institute and author of Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse
• Arlene Sanchez-Walsh, Professor of Religious Studies at Azusa Pacific University and author of Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self, and Society
• Jacqueline Keeler, writer and activist of Dineh and Yankton Dakota heritage, co-founder of Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry (EONM), and author Standoff: Standing Rock, the Bundy Movement, and the American Story of Occupation, Sovereignty and the Fight for Sacred Lands
• Larry Perry, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; currently working on a book entitled A Black Spiritual Leftist: Howard Thurman and the Religious Left’s Unfinished Business of Race Relations
• William Dinges, Ordinary Professor of Religion and Culture at The Catholic University of America and co-author of Young Adult Catholics: Religion in the Culture of Choice

To do a deep dive into just one aspect of this fascinating and meaningful subject, we have as our guest Kate Holbrook, currently managing historian in the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Dr. Holbrook received her master’s degree at Harvard Divinity School and PhD in religion and society from Boston University in 2014. She is the author of many articles and chapters, and co-editor of several books, including At the Pulpit: 150 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women, Women and Mormonism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, and The First Fifty Years of Relief Society. For our discussion today, we are looking at the chapter she wrote in the book Religion, Food & Eating in North America, called edited by Benjamin Zeller, Marie Dallam, Reid Neilson, and Nora Rubel published in 2014.

Today’s episode will help us better understand what religion has done to America, and what America has done to religion, and we trust that as a result, listeners will see how indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle, is, to the United States and its ability to fulfill its purposes in the world.

I just read this in the newspaper a few days ago “Administration short of shelter space amid ‘overwhelming’ [immigration] surge: record number of unaccompanied minors being held in adult cells far longer than legally allowed.” This morning’s paper had another front page piece on the surge at our southern border. Immigration reform is a major policy task of the current administration.

It is also important to note that there has been a recent rise in attacks against Asian Americans, addressed in an editorial of a major national newspaper over the weekend.

We feel that a better understanding of how religious beliefs have influenced the attitudes and government policies towards immigrants throughout U.S. history can benefit us in our present moment.

Today we have a panel of fantastic scholars who will help us do a deep dive:

Melissa Borja, Assistant Professor in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan, and author of the forthcoming book Follow the New Way: Hmong Refugee Resettlement and Practice of American Religious Pluralism;

Grace Yukitch, Professor of Sociology at Quinnipiac University, and author of One Family Under God: Immigration Politics and Progressive Religion in America;

Fenggang Yang, Professor of Sociology at Purdue University, and author of Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation, and Adhesive Identities;

Shari Rabin, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Religion, and author of Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-century America;

Kristy Nabhan-Warren, Professor and Chair in Catholic Studies at the University of Iowa, and author of the forthcoming book Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland.

And, Nick Pruitt, Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Nazarene College and author of the forthcoming book Open Hearts, Closed Doors: Immigration Reform and the Waning of Mainline Protestantism.

To do a deep dive into just one aspect of this fascinating and meaningful subject, we have as our guest Derek Hicks, Associate Professor of Religion and Culture at Wake Forest University’s Divinity School. Hicks teaches and researches broadly in the areas of African American religion, religion in North America, race, the body, religion and foodways, theory and method in the study of religion, Black and Womanist theologies, and cultural studies. Dr. Hicks is the author of the book Reclaiming Spirit in the Black Faith Tradition and is currently working on a second monograph entitled Feeding Flesh and Spirit: Religion, Food, and the Saga of Race in Black America. He also contributed chapters for the book Blacks and Whites in Christian America: How Racial Discrimination Shapes Religious Convictions.

For our discussion today, we are looking at his chapter “Gumbo and the Complex Brew of Black Religion” from the book Religion, Food & Eating in North America, edited by Benjamin Zeller, Marie Dallam, Reid Neilson, and Nora Rubel.

I am confident that today’s podcast will help us better understand what religion has done to America, and what America has done to religion, and we trust that as a result, listeners will see how indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle, is, to the United States and its ability to fulfill its purposes in the world.

We encourage our listeners to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and register for future podcast notifications under the “signup” tab.

Yet, religious tests for public office are banned by the Constitution, America may have no state church, and we are sensitive to the intertwining of government and religion. Adding to that mix, the Pew Research Center reported a few years ago that “the U.S. is steadily becoming less Christian and less religiously observant” AND there is a fully developed idea in the public square, that religion is part of, not a solution to, America’s problems.

“American Civil Religion” (in quotations), the idea that a nonsectarian quasi-religious faith exists within the U.S. with sacred symbols drawn from national history, may be helpful to us at our present moment in American history. We can use it as a lens to view the recent inauguration and our current politics generally, as we participate in the American experiment in self-government, founded 245 years ago, saved 156 years ago, and work to see it successfully extended into the future for ourselves and children.

What are we to think of American Civil Religion? What is its history? What does it mean? How does it motivate us? What are the ramifications? Is it on the upswing or is it fading away? What has it done to us? What does it do to us? How does it drive our behavior, political or otherwise?

Today’s panel consists of four scholars who will help us with these questions:

Dr. Nichole R. Phillips is Associate Professor in the Practice of Sociology of Religion and Culture, Director of the Black Church Studies Program at Emory University; and author of Patriotism Black and White: The Color of American Exceptionalism.

Dr. Philip Gorski is Professor of Sociology at Yale University and author of American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present

Dr. John Carlson is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University where he directs the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict. He is co-editor of From Jeremiad to Jihad: Religion, Violence and America.

Dr. Lisa Barnett is Assistant Professor of American Religious History at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma

We trust that at the conclusion of this podcast, listeners will have a deeper appreciation of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States and will see to its protection as an indispensable part of the fragile American experiment in self-government.

Today we have with us Darren Dochuk, the Andrew V. Tackes College Professor of History at The University of Notre Dame, and author of Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America. Mr. Dochuk’s primary research interest is 20th century United States, with an emphasis on the intersections of religion, politics, and the rising influence of the American west and Sunbelt Southwest in national life. He is the author, editor and co-editor of many books, including From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism, God’s Businessmen: Entrepreneurial Evangelicals in Depression and War, and Faith in the New Millennium: The Future of Religion and American Politics. Professor Dochuk received his PhD from The University of Notre Dame.  

To join the cause in establishing the "digital first" National Museum of American Religion, visit storyofamericanreligion.org/sign-up and sign up for newsletters and podcast notifications.

In 1976 Sports Illustrated published a three-part essay by the famed sports commentator Frank DeFord titled “Religion in Sport” in which he analyzed the cozy relationship between Christianity and sports in the United States, and it was in this article that he coined the term “sportianity”, writing this: it is almost as if a new denomination had been created: Sportianity. While Christian churches struggle with problems of declining attendance, falling contributions and now even reduction in membership, Sportianity appears to be taking off.” That same year Michael Novak published The Joy of Sports, articulating the religiosity embedded in the playing and cheering of sports.

This discussion will help us better understand what religion has done to America, and what America has done to religion, and we trust that as a result, listeners will see how indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle, is, to the United States and its ability to fulfill its purposes in the world.

Today to talk about religion and sports we have with us Jeffrey Scholes, associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Colorado – Colorado Springs, and author of the book Christianity, Race and Sport, to be published next year by Routledge Press. Professor Scholes’ research interests center on the relationship between religion and sports, and American political theology. He is the author of Vocation and the Politics of Work: Popular Theology in a Consumer Culture and co-author of Religion and Sports in American Culture.

Join us in building The National Museum of American Religion in the nation's capital, to open in 2026, on the 240th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's immortal words "Almighty God hath created the mind free", by donating at storyofamericanreligion.org/contribute.

For a contribution of $200 or more you will receive a free copy of the book When Sorrow Comes: The Power of Sermons from Pearl Harbor to Black Lives Matter, by Melissa Matthes, professor of government at The United States Coast Guard Academy. Her forthcoming book reminds us that in the face of national crisis, faith leaders have incredible power to help Americans endure, even flourish, and further the work of improving the imperfect yet noble American experiment in self-government.

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, and closed temples, mosques, synagogues, and churches.

What counsel have religious leaders been offering to their people in the face of the pandemic? We thought “Religion in the American Experience” could both capture history in real-time, AND  be of service to the country, by convening a panel of American religious leaders to share what they have told their congregations and believers, with a broader national audience. 

Today’s panel consists of ten religious leaders, some with national scope others with regional or local scope, and we thank them for their willingness to be with us. I will introduce each as we move through the hour-long panel.

The start-up National Museum of American Religion will be both the place of convening in Washington, DC, for discussions about current national issues where religion or the idea of religious freedom is in play, as we are doing today, AND the nationally recognized center for presenting, interpreting, and educating the public about what religion has done to America, and what America has done to religion, including the history of the revolutionary and indispensable idea of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States.

Join us in building The National Museum of American Religion in the nation's capital, to open in 2026, on the 240th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's immortal words "Almighty God hath created the mind free", capturing the American essence of religious freedom, by donating at storyofamericanreligion.org/contribute.

For a contribution of $200 or more you will receive a free copy of the book When Sorrow Comes: The Power of Sermons from Pearl Harbor to Black Lives Matter, by Melissa Matthes, professor of government at The United States Coast Guard Academy. Her forthcoming book reminds us that in the face of national crisis, faith leaders have incredible power to help Americans endure, even flourish, and further the work of improving the imperfect yet noble American experiment in self-government.

This discussion will help us better understand what religion has done to America, and what America has done to religion, and we trust that as a result, listeners will see how indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle, is, to the United States and its ability to fulfill its purposes in the world.

Today to discuss religion and sports we have with us Rebecca Alpert, Professor of Religion at Temple University and author of Religion and Sports: An Introduction and Case Studies, which we will use as the basis of the interview today. Her research interests include religion and sport, religion and sexuality and American Judaism in the twentieth century. She is also the author of Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball and co-editor of Gods, Games, and Globalization: New Perspectives on Religion and Sport, published in 2019. Professor Alpert was among the first women in America ordained as a rabbi.

We encourage listeners to visit  storyofamericanreligion.org and sign up for future podcast notifications under the “signup” tab.

I am confident that today’s podcast will help us better understand what religion has done to America, and what America has done to religion, and we trust that as a result, listeners will see how indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle, is, to the United States and its ability to fulfill its purposes in the world.

The story of this transformation is critical to understanding the American religious landscape, which is another way of saying it is critical to understanding America. And, often the best way to understand a historical movement or event is to learn about individual actors on history’s stage.

Importantly, as historian Anne Braude of Harvard Divinity School wrote: “Women’s History is American Religious History.” One prominent Catholic in American history is Elizabeth Ann Seton, who began the Sisters of Charity, the first religious community of women founded in the United States, and who was the aunt of Seton Hall University’s founder, Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley.

Today to help us understand the life and times of Elizabeth Ann Seton is Catherine O'Donnell, Professor of History at Arizona State University and author of Elizabeth Seton: American Saint, which was awarded the Distinguished Book Award by the Conference on the History of Women Religious, for books published from 2016-2018, as well as the Biography Prize from the Catholic Press Association. Her primary research interests include Early American history, culture, and religion. She is also the author of Men of Letters in the Early Republic and many articles appearing in venues including the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Early Republic, Early American Literature, and the US Catholic Historian. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on early American history and the Atlantic World.

It is hoped that our time together today will help us better understand what religion has done to America, and what America has done to religion, and we trust that as a result, listeners will come to better understand how revolutionary and indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle, is, to the United States and its future.

Join us in building The National Museum of American Religion in the nation's capital, to open in 2026, on the 240th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's immortal words "Almighty God hath created the mind free", by donating at storyofamericanreligion.org/contribute.

Through the podcast series “Religion in the American Experience” scholars of American history share stories of religion exerting a vast influence, for good and ill, on the imperfect yet noble American experiment in self-government and its people. These are tales all Americans need to hear in order to better understand America and their role in its present & future.  

Just two days ago we saw the inauguration of a new president of the United States, and just the second Catholic president in our history.

Knowing that religion is a profound shaper of men and women, Wednesday’s peaceful transfer of power made us think that it would be fascinating, even beneficial to 21st century American progress, to learn more about American presidents and the religions that shaped them.

Our panel this morning consists of (and panelists, please raise your hand when your name is read):

Gary Scott Smith, who before his retirement, chaired the History Department at Grove City College and is the author or editor of eleven books including Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to George W. Bush and Religion in the Oval Office: The Religious Lives of American Presidents. Smith is also an ordained minister in the PCUSA and served five congregations as an interim or stated supply pastor.

Randall Balmer taught at Barnard College and Columbia University for twenty-seven years before moving to Dartmouth College in 2012, where he was named the Mandel Family Professor in the Arts & Sciences. He is the author of Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter. He is also an Episcopal priest. Balmer was nominated for an Emmy for scriptwriting and hosting the three-part PBS documentary Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, an insightful and engaging journey into the world of conservative Christians in America, based on his book with the same title. 

Join us building The National Museum of American Religion in the nation's capital, to open in 2026, the 240th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's immortal words "Almighty God hath created the mind free." Contribute today at www.storyofamericanreligion.org/contribute.

To do this we have with us Maegan Parker Brooks, associate professor in the School of Civic Communication and Media at Willamette University, and author of several books and other media about the life and times of Fannie Lou Hamer, including Fannie Lou Hamer: America’s Freedom Fighting Woman and the children’s book Planting Seeds: The Life and Legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009, and is a teacher-scholar working at the intersections of rhetoric, race and public memory.

Today’s episode will help us better understand what religion has done to America, and what America has done to religion, and we trust that as a result, listeners will see how indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle, is, to the United States and its ability to fulfill its purposes in the world.

We encourage our listeners to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and register for future podcast notifications under the “signup” tab.

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 Saves” signs; prayer groups; a large wooden cross on the east plaza; and from an article in the paper the next morning “beneath streaming flags … people loudly exhorted Jesus and chanted ‘USA’!”

We are here this morning to learn the lessons of history, specifically the history of religion and politics in the United States, from a panel of leading American scholars, and offer these lessons to the public so we can all better understand and react to, the violent occupation of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Our panel consists of (and panelists, please raise your hand when your name is read):

• Marie Griffith, Director of The John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis
• Jamil Drake, Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Florida State University
• Lerone A. Martin, Associate Professor of Religion and Politics, also at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics 
• Hasia Diner, Director, Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History at New York University
• Amy Black, Professor of Political Science at Wheaton College

Go to www.storyofamericanreligion.org/sign-up/ to register for podcast notifications.

If anyone thinks about religion in America, which thinking is absolutely essential to understand America itself, one of the first things that comes to mind, whether one is religious or not, is “Billy Graham.” And even if not, because of his 20th century (the “American century”) influence, we should think about him. Born in 1918 on a dairy farm in North Carolina, Billy Graham later would be an advisor to American presidents, travel the world including behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, and fill stadiums to witness his preaching.

Our discussion about this towering figure on the American historical stage will help us better understand what religion has done to America, and what America has done to religion, and we trust that as a result, listeners will see how indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle, is, to the United States and its ability to fulfill its purposes in the world.

Today we have with us Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke University, and author of America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. He specializes in the history of Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, World Missions and American Protestant thought. He is the author or co-editor of seven books, including Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (2001, Harvard University Press). He has served as a senior editor of the quarterly journal, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, and is past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and of the American Society of Church History, and a trustee of Fuller Theological Seminary.

This episode was recorded on December 8, 2020.

We encourage our listeners to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and register for future podcast notifications under the “signup” tab.

Today we have with us Richard Bushman, Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History, United States at Columbia University, to help us understand who Joseph Smith was by discussing his book Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, A Cultural Biography of Mormonism’s Founder. Mr. Bushman specializes in the social and cultural history of the United States and received his PhD from Harvard University. He is the author of several other books, including From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765, King and People in Provincial Massachusetts, and The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities.

We encourage listeners to visit  storyofamericanreligion.org and resister for future podcast notifications under the “sign-up” tab.

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 Dreisbach is professor in the Department of Justice, Law and Criminology at American University in Washington, D.C., with primary research interests in American constitutional law and history, First Amendment law, church-state relations, and criminal procedure. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia and his PhD from Oxford University. Dr. Dreisbach is the author, editor, or co-editor of a dozen books on religion in America, including his recently published Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers. 

Mark David Hall is the Herbert Hoover Distinguished professor of politics at George Fox University in Oregon, with primary research interests in American political theory and the relationship between religion and politics. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia.  Dr. Hall is the author, editor, or co-editor of a dozen books on religion in America, including most recently Did America Have a Christian Founding?

We encourage listeners to visit  storyofamericanreligion.org and sign up for future podcast notifications under the “Sign Up” tab.

Today we have with us Tisa Wenger, associate professor of American religious history at Yale Divinity School, to show us some of this history of religious freedom by discussing her book Religious Freedom: A Contested History of an American Ideal. Professor Wenger’s research and teaching interests include religious encounters in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States; the cultural politics of religious freedom; and the intersections of race, religion and empire in American history. She is also the author of We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom.

Sign up for notifications of future podcasts: www.storyofamericanreligion.org/sign-up/

We have with us today Barry Hankins, Professor of History and Department Chair at Baylor University, who will walk us through some of the more important parts of Baptist history in the United States (focusing on post Civil War up to the present) using the fantastic book Baptists in America, written by Professor Hankins and his Baylor colleague, Professor Thomas Kidd. Dr. Hankins’ research interests include religion and American culture, Protestant Fundamentalism and EvanGELicalism, and church and state in American history. He received his PhD from Kansas State University in 1990, and is the author of several books including Woodrow Wilson: Ruling Elder, Spiritual President, Jesus and Gin: Evangelicals, the Roaring Twenties, and Today’s Culture Wars, and God’s Rascal: J. Frank Norris and the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism.

Also, as with each episode in our podcast series “Religion in the American Experience”, we trust that listeners will come away with a better comprehension of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion, and thus come to value the necessity of this idea of religious freedom as a governing principle to America fulfilling her purposes in the world.

Got to www.storyofamericanreligion/sign-up/ to register for notifications of all future podcasts!

We are honored to have Dr. Sutton with us today to discuss his book Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War. Dr. Sutton is the Berry Family Distinguished Professor in the Liberal Arts in the Department of History at Washington State University. He teaches courses in 20th century United States history, cultural history and religious history. Dr. Sutton received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005, and is the author of several books including American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelism, Faith in the New Millennium: The Future of American Religion and Politics, and Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America.

Also, as with each episode in our podcast series “Religion in the American Experience”, we hope listeners come away with a better comprehension of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion, and thus more fully comprehend the necessity of this idea of religious freedom to America fulfilling her purposes in the world.

Sign up for podcast notifications at https://storyofamericanreligion.org/sign-up/.

Professor Eric McDaniel is here with us today to discuss his book Politics in the Pews: The Political Mobilization of Black Churches, in an effort to help us better understand this particular part of American religious history – the role of the Black church in American politics. 

Eric McDaniel is Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Professor McDaniel specializes in American politics. His research areas include religion and politics, Black politics, and organizational behavior. His work targets how and why Black religious institutions choose to become involved in political matters. In addition, his work targets the role of religious institutions in shaping Black political behavior. He received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004.

Please go to storyofamericanreligion.org and sign up for future podcast episode notifications under the "Sign Up" tab.

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 of American History at the University of Cambridge and author of Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy. Mr. Preston specializes in the history of American foreign relations, specifically the intersection between national and international, including the influence that domestic politics and culture – particularly religion – have had on conduct of U.S. foreign policy.

Also, as with each episode in our podcast series “Religion in the American Experience”, we hope listeners come away with a better comprehension of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion, and thus more fully comprehend the necessity of this idea of religious freedom to America fulfilling her purposes in the world.

Please go to https://storyofamericanreligion.org/sign-up/ and sign up for notifications of future episodes!

Paul Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of History and Presidential Teaching Scholar at University of Colorado – Colorado Springs, where he researches, writes and teaches in the field of American history from the 16th century to the present. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkley in 1992. Dr. Harvey is the author of many books, including Howard Thurman and the Disinherited: A Religious Biography; The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in American History; and Freedom’s Coming: Religious Cultures and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era.

We are very happy to have Paul here to help us understand a particular part of American religious history – the intersections of religion and race, by discussing his book, Bounds of Their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History published in 2017.

Also, as with each episode in our podcast series “Religion in the American Experience”, we hope listeners come away with a better comprehension of what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion, and come to see how revolutionary and indispensable the idea of religious freedom is to America being able to fulfill its purposes in the world.

Be sure to follow the podcast series "Religion in the American Experience" by going to storyofamericanreligion.org under the Podcast tab.

The legacies of colonialism swirl all about us still, including broken treaties, reservations, alcoholism, poverty, despair, misunderstandings, and questions of sovereignty, alongside of survival, persistence, cultural and linguistic revitalization, and a return to traditional practices. Because religion was central to these processes in colonial America, and continues to play an important role today, taking a look at the religious interactions between European colonists and Native Americans will help us all better understand these issues and help each other flourish in the American 21st century.

Linford Fisher is a professor of history at Brown University. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 2008. Professor Fisher's research and teaching relate primarily to the cultural and religious history of colonial America and the Atlantic world, including Native Americans, religion, material culture, and Indian and African slavery and servitude. 

Go here to sign up and follow The National Museum of American Religion! https://storyofamericanreligion.org/contact/ 

We are very grateful to have Professor Mark Noll with us today to plumb the depths of his book The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, hoping that this will help all us better understand the reckoning America has undertaken. Dr. Noll is an American historian specializing in the history of Christianity in the United States. He holds the honorary position of Research Professor of History at Regent College, having previously been the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. Mr. Noll was awarded the National Humanities Medal in the Oval Office by President George W. Bush in 2006. He is the author of many books including Protestantism--A Very Short Introduction, God and Race in American Politics: A Short History, and America's God, from Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln.

Go to https://storyofamericanreligion.org/contact/ to sign up for future podcast notifications!

Their impact on U.S. foreign policy is large, fascinating and full of experiences with direct bearing on our politics today. This is especially true as Americans look abroad to the Middle East and China, two places where one, the United States has been actively engaged in the last several decades, and two, the culture is wrapped in powerful religious ideas very foreign to Christianity in general, and evangelicalism in particular.

Today we are grateful to have Professor Lauren Turek with us to discuss her book To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelical Influence on Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Relations. The case studies in her book detail the extent of Evangelical influence on American foreign policy from the late 1970s through the 1990s. Dr. Turek is an Assistant Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She earned her doctorate in history from the University of Virginia in 2015, and holds a degree in museum studies from New York University as well as a degree in history from Vassar College. Dr. Turek is a specialist in U.S. diplomatic history and American religious history, and is currently at work on a second book project, which will explore congressional debates over U.S. foreign aid in the twentieth century. 

Go to https://storyofamericanreligion.org/contact/ to sign up for future podcast notifications!

Ed Larson, author of A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign, holds the Hugh and Hazel Darling Chair in Law and is University Professor of History at Pepperdine University. He has a PhD in the history of science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a law degree from Harvard. Prior to becoming a professor, Larson practiced law in Seattle and served as counsel for the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC.

Mr. Larson is the author or co-author of fourteen books and over one hundred published articles, including the Pulitzer Prize winning Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion. His latest book, On Earth and Science, was published by Yale University Press in 2017.

He was a resident scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study Center; held the Fulbright Program's John Adams Chair in American Studies; and served as an inaugural Fellow at the Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon.

Go to https://storyofamericanreligion.org/contact/ to sign up for future podcast notifications!

When Americans have experienced trauma, they have often reached out to religion hoping for some emotional comfort, physical assistance and answers to help them understand the sometimes chaotic and destructive world that surrounds them.

Peter Thuesen just published what is, for these reasons, a very timely book called Tornado God: American Religion and Violent Weather, which, and I’m quoting here from the book cover flap, "captures the harrowing drama of tornadoes, as clergy, theologians, meteorologists, and ordinary citizens struggle to make sense of these death-dealing tempests. Mr. Thuesen says something that all Americans should listen to: ‘in the tornado, Americans experience something that is at once culturally peculiar and religiously primal.... In the whirlwind, Americans confront the question of their own destiny’...." 

Go to https://storyofamericanreligion.org/contact/ to sign up for future podcast notifications!