Religion and the American West: Belief, Violence and Resilience from 1800 to Today invites readers to travel beyond the mythologized “Wild West” and experience a land populated by preachers, pilgrims, and visionaries and home to sacred grounds and cathedrals that kindled spiritual feeling from the woodlands of New York to the valleys of California.
Serving as the the companion publication for New-York Historical Society's exhibition Acts of Faith: Religion and the American West, the book brings together the best scholarship on the subject to provide a comprehensive overview of the ways religion has shaped the idea of the American West, and features more than 100 images that illustrate a varied range of religious expressions. Challenging longstanding definitions of the "American West", Religion and the American West provides a new narrative that focuses our attention on the lived experiences of diverse peoples and communities.
Acts of Faith: Religion and the American West, on view September 22, 2023 - February 25, 2024, is an exhibition that explores the interplay between religion and US expansion in the 19th-century West in order to illuminate how religion became such a vital and contested part of American life.
