Religion and the American West

"Until now, few have explored how the forces of religion and the American West have created and transformed one another and the people and places they pervade. This insightful book and the stunning exhibition that it accompanies provide the visual and intellectual grounding to see the connections in myriad forms of tragedy and majesty."--Virginia Scharff, coauthor of Home Lands: How Women Made the West

"Religion and the American West brings together the best scholarship on the subject with a dizzying array of material evidence in order to tell the story of a multicultural, multidimensional American West--reflecting the American West not as it is imagined, but as it was."--Brandi Denison, author of Ute Land Religion in the American West, 1879-2009

"This wonderful book weaves together the threads of many different stories--intimate, diverse, and often haunting--in ways that set a new standard for the field. Religion emerges here as a product of encounter, inextricable from the material and often violent conditions of daily life, a way for all sorts of people to shape communities and (re)make homes throughout the American West. In the process, Nelson and her coauthors provide fresh illumination into the imperial history of this region and into its contested futures."--Tisa Wenger, author of Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal

"This lavishly illustrated collection of essays on religion and the American West is an original, effective introduction to a fascinating field. The authors deftly encapsulate the millennia of human history, and the millions of square miles of human habitation and migration routes, into smart, innovative essays. Using vivid storytelling, they make sophisticated theoretical concepts and cutting-edge scholarship accessible to lay readers."--Quincy D. Newell, author of Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon

"In clear, accessible language Nelson and her contributors boldly explore relationships between the American West and religion in ways that expanded my understanding of both."--Todd Kerstetter, author of God's Country, Uncle Sam's Land: Faith and Conflict in the American West