T isa W enger . Religious Freedom

The new American religious historiography that began to flower in the 1980s and 1990s not only represented a departure from earlier denominational approaches but also turned away from institutionally oriented interpretive models. Into the 2000s, historians of American religion have become much more fully engaged with postmodern modes of interpretation and have begun to incorporate the current intersectional trend, with its trifecta of race, gender, and class. While this fresh look at historical sources has its Old Light detractors, most critics have been effectively silenced by skilled recovery of unheard voices, most especially of women, underrepresented minorities, and the subaltern. Because the earlier religious histories were largely driven by establishment agendas and cobbled together from denominational reports and missionary accounts both from home and abroad, they typically and almost exclusively emphasized and trumpeted the accomplishments of male religious leaders. This history was triumphalist in tenor and tone: the successes of churchmen in the conversion and social uplift of native peoples, with gospel and democracy going hand in hand in the spread of religious and political liberty. In Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal, Tisa Wenger speaks a better word. Fully conversant in the new historiography, Wenger argues that as a pervasive American concept, religious liberty “helped define American whiteness and make the case for U.S. imperial rule” (1).

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