American Fanatics: Spirited Rebellion and the Policing of Religion
My current book project examines how nineteenth-century ministers, scholars, and government agents developed the concept of fanaticism in an era of religious and political radicalism. Examining institutional efforts to police diverse communities such as women abolitionists, Filipino insurgents, Black prophets, and Mormon settlers, this book invites readers to reconsider how we categorize dissent. In addition to this discursive analysis, American Fanatics draws on the academic study of religion to offer insights into how powerful institutions and rebellious communities alike have sparred over divine authenticity, spirited feelings, and sacred violence. This history shows how fanaticism, far from being an aberration, has been a common, though contested, feature of US culture and politics.
Teaching & Research Areas
THE ACADEMIC STUDY OF RELIGION
Predictions about the decline of religion—or at least its relegation to private life—have been, at the very least, premature. The discerning student of the academic study of religion can see religion’s enduring importance and how it is intimately connected to culture and politics. Knowing about religion and knowing how to study religion are critical skills to be an informed and responsible citizen of the world. The field, and my courses, offer religious and non-religious students the tools necessary to study the power of the building blocks of religion: myth, ritual, community, authority, the sacred, and supernaturalism for human beings.
Students and interested citizens can learn more about the academic study of religion at Iowa State University at our program’s website and @ISUphilRS on Facebook and Instagram.
Religion in US history
My primary field of study is religion in the United States with a focus on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In my teaching and research, I emphasize how (Protestant) Christian norms have influenced US nationalism and culture, even as the US has become home to a wide array of communities and traditions. The study of secularism in the US provides an analytical framework for thinking about how secular institutions - including the law - define what is and is not “religion” in accordance with particular priorities and assumptions. I understand modern US statecraft to be defined not by secularization (the privatization or disappearance of religion), but by the strategic deployment of differences between science, religion, and superstition, among other key terms. My work brings together analyses of law, popular culture media, religious authorities, and politicians to complicate notions of religious freedom and religion as reducible to individualized private belief.
Modern Christianity
From its emergence in the Judean and Mediterranean worlds, Christianity has always been a global and diverse religion with a shifting and at times tense relationship with political authority. Rather than a linear story of progressive changes in theology, I approach the history of Christianity as one of diverse lived religion and institutional powers. This continued in the fifteenth century as Christianity changed through colonial expansion and the confessional fractures of the Reformations in the Catholic and Protestant churches. Diverse branches of Christianity, from Kongolese Catholicism to the LDS Church to the Oneida Community, influenced and were challenged by changes in the modern world. Issues today include globalization, modern science, sexuality, historical criticism, racism, secularism, and, most recently, climate change.
Radicalism, violence, and conspiracies
Though the common sense thinking of liberal secularism suggests that religions are, or at least should be, peaceful, recent scholarship argues that we should also attend to the varieties of religious radicalism, violence, and conspiratorial thinking. My work, especially in my book project American Fanatics, attends to how secular institutions and religious communities alike have sparred over divine authenticity, spirited feelings, and sacred violence.
Race and Colonialism
My research explores how claims and practices of white supremacy emerged within the context of Euro-American colonial conquest. Euro-Americans referenced religious practices and beliefs, as much as biomarkers, to legitimate claims of sovereignty and “racial” superiority. My work asks: how do understandings of religious difference (fanaticism, superstition, cults, demonic religions, etc) reify or challenge this history of violence?
Myths, World-Building, and Game DEsign
Popular culture draws on and functions as religion in modern society. This is true for cinema, music, literature, and sports. It’s also true for video games and tabletop games, which are growing industries producing increasingly niche and elaborate game worlds. How might the humanities help game designers tell historically and culturally accurate stories? Similarly, how might the humanities help game designers create worlds that players want to explore, enjoy, and learn from?
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