With the doubling of America’s territory that came with the Louisiana Purchase, American culture was remapped in the bargain. The region’s indigenous inhabitants had already been joined by Catholic missionaries, both French and Spanish, along with Africans brought as slaves to the Caribbean islands and North America; now all were met by a predominantly Protestant culture rushing westward.

New Territories, New Perspectives marks the first study to take the Louisiana Purchase as the focal point for considering the development of American religious history. The process of transforming the Louisiana Territory into U.S. territory meant shaping the space to conform to American cultural and religious identity, and this volume investigates continuities, disruptions, and changes relating to religion in this context.

The contributors ask what might happen to our understanding of religion in America if we look at it through the lens of this annexation. Initial chapters offer fresh perspectives on the new territory by those who settled it, primarily easterners, exploring such topics as the built environment of the region as seen in such settings as frontier camp meetings and communitarian societies, ideas of destiny amid the clash of cultural groups, and religiously significant aspects of African American life.

Subsequent essays take up the religious history of the region from the perspective of New Orleans and the Caribbean. They include an exploration of the roots of Pentecostalism in the mix of black and white cultures in the Mississippi Delta, the “vodou” link between New Orleans and Haiti, and the African-Creole performances of Mardi Gras Indians.

 Together, these essays invite readers to consider intersecting histories that are too often neglected in our understanding of America’s religious development, particularly issues that stand apart from traditional histories of religion in the Midwest. By exploring the unexpected, they also promote different ways of thinking about American religious history as a whole.     

About the Editor
            Richard J. Callahan Jr. is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Missouri–Columbia.

Contents       

Introduction: A Reorienting View from the Center of the Country by Richard J. Callahan Jr.

 The Religious Landscape of the Louisiana Purchase by Peter W. Williams

 Conflicting Destinies: Religion, Sex, and Violence in the Louisiana Purchase by Amanda Porterfield

 Wide Open Spaces: The Trail of Tears, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and Gaps in the National Memory by Michael J. Zogry

 Crossroads, the Cosmos, and Jazz in the Heartland: Oklahoma City’s Deep Deuce and Kansas City’s Vine Street by Douglas Henry Daniels

 The Shifting Nature of Reform Envisioned on the Mississippi Steamer: Exchanges, Masks, and Charities in Herman Melville’s “The Confidence Man” by Carole Lynn Stewart

 Mixed Race Ecstasy across a Single Line: The Deep South Roots of Pentecostal Tongue Speaking by Elaine J. Lawless

 Vodou Purchase: The Louisiana Purchase in the Caribbean World by Paul Christopher Johnson

 Spirituality and Resistance among African-Creoles by John Stewart

 New Orleans as an American City: Origins, Exchanges, Materialities, and Religion by Charles H. Long