The study of American religions: critical reflections on a specialization

New scholarship in religion and United States empire

“…One key unresolved problem is how to theorize the relationship between the diversity uncovered by decades of adding “more” to the field and the dominance of white, Anglophone Protestants over what counts as “religion” or “good religion” in America (Fessenden, ; Orsi, ). The dominant approach in the field has been liberal integration, which adds “diverse” religions to narratives centering white Protestants without reconsidering theories of religion or religious practice in light of historical inequalities between white Protestants and “others.” As Finbarr Curtis puts it, the risk of this approach is that “including more narratives can appear to be a political solution in and of itself” to the hegemonic dominance of white Protestantism over talk about religion in the United States (F. Curtis, , pp. 364–365).…”

“…However, both synthetic narratives about American religion and the field's theoretical repertoire have changed less than this story implies. They include “others” but do not question liberal interpretations of American religious history that frame limitations to personal freedom and civil rights—such as failures to recognize minority practices and beliefs as “religion” under the law—as contradictions in or imperfect realizations of American ideals instead of signs that those ideals do not tell the whole story (Bivins, ; F. Curtis, ).…”