A God-Shaped Nation (1749)

About this item

A kaleidoscopic American history of extraordinary religious transformations, told through the ordinary people who made them happen Ever since conquistadores claimed Taino land in the name of their Catholic God and New England Puritans formed their strictly Protestant "city on a hill," religion has been central to American life. Even as some found religious freedom—Rhode Island welcomed the Quakers, Jews, and Baptists that Massachusetts expelled as dissenters—indigenous people and Africans forced into slavery struggled to protect their religious practices. With the constitutional separation of church and state, it fell to the American people to decide: would they sharpen religion's formidable powers of division, or reimagine its creative possibilities? In A God-Shaped Nation , Brook Wilensky-Lanford follows this essential American tension from first contact through the 2024 election. This is an expansive history of extraordinary