American Empire and American Religion

A simplistic stereotype of the empire/religion linkage simply imagines empires forcibly spreading their own beliefs onto unwilling Native recipients, who are thereby saved from Heathen darkness, and who in the process lose their cultures and (often) their lands. That certainly can happen, and the cynical uses of religion for imperial purposes have often been analyzed, and satirized. But other interactions are much more complex. Empires can for instance enable the spread of religious systems of which they totally disapprove, the obvious example being how the Roman Empire quite unintentionally created a world safe for Christianity. Also, empires can on occasion become “infected” with the faiths of which they initially disapprove, as those faiths develop roots in the metropolitan homeland. Subject religions can become official religions. Read Full Article »