250 YEARS | 25 ESSAYS
(1776) Indigenous Religions
The story of the 1782 massacre in Gnadenhutten, Ohio, of indigenous Moravian Christians, to discuss how not all Christians were ever welcome in this "Christian nation."
(1790) Levi Sheftall Letter
A 1790 letter from the leader of Savannah Georgia's Congregation Mikve Israel to George Washington reveals the delicate position of Jewish communities in early America--both enthusiastic patriots and religious outsiders.
(1803) Ring Shout
How African-American women took up the traditional African practice of the "ring shout," to navigate and survive the depravations of life under enslavement.
(1809) Ohio Amish
Amish groups, who settled in Ohio in 1809, have maintained their tradition of not relying on government or institutions for their daily life--which has led some, in the 21st century, to rely on solar-powered electricity.
(1825) Project Ararat
Mordecai Manual Noah announces the creation of a "Jewish haven" on Grand Island, near Buffalo, New York; emblematic of the "burned-over district" utopian movements, and their obsession with reforming practices around women and the family.
(1833) Peoples of the Missouri River
The daily life and religious practices of indigenous people along the Missouri River--including the Mandan, Hidatsa, Blackfoot, Crow, Assiniboin, Plains Ojibwa, and Cree--as encountered by painter George Catlin.
(1850) The Erie Canal
How this man-made waterway made possible the creation and distribution of new religious ideas, including: Adventism, the AME church, abolitionism, and spiritualism.
(1855) Omar Ibn Said
A story of Senegalese Muslim men in South Carolina--Omar ibn Said, enslaved in the 1840s and 50s, and Sufi Shaykh Arona Faye (1949-2025) who establishes a Black Muslim community in Moncks Corner, SC, in 1994, on a former plantation, in a site with deep history of enslavement and resistance.
(1868) The Gates Ajar
How the second-best-selling novel of the 19th century (after Uncle Tom's Cabin) brought the Spiritualist "thin veil" view of the afterlife into mainstream American mourning practices after the Civil War.
(1880) Wong Chin Foo
The story of the author of "Why I Am a Heathen" and self-described First Confucian missionary to the U.S. and his long-running antagonism with anti-Chinese labor leader Denis Kearney, in the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
(1890) Ghost Dance
The story of movement as an innovative Indigenous religious movement that long outlasted its presumed destruction at Wounded Knee, following the much mythologized "ghost shirts" made by participants.
(1899) Swami Vivekenanda
Following his appearance at the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago, Swami Vivekenanda two-year U.S. tour brings Hinduism into American public consciousness.
(1912) 'Abdu'l-Bahá
The 1912 national tour of the son of the founder of the Bahai faith, which popularizes this global faith.
(1920) "An Open Religious Wound"
Introducing the U.S.-Mexico border's own borderland saints and healing traditions that have survived the fracturing influence of the state.
(1927) Eva Jessye, "Exoduster"
Celebrated Harlemn Renaissance choral conductor Eva Jessye publishes a collection of unique spirituals her childhood as an "Exoduster" with Afro-Cherokee roots in rural Kansas, offering them as a unique cultural heritage and universal spiritual resource.
(1942) Buddha, Incarcerated
Three objects from WWII era Japanese internment camps--a photograph of the Buddha and the American flag; a lotus-flower-shaped memorial statue; and the Stone Sutras of Heart Mountain--tell the story of the presence, survival, and adaptation of American Buddhism.
(1948) Ahmadiyya Muslims
This Muslim movement, originally from India, drew many Americans of all nationalities to Islam in the early-mid twentieth century, notably including Yusef Latieef and numerous other jazz musicians.
(1958) God Bless the Pill
How religious groups expanded American access to birth control, via a 1958 conflict over whether New York City public hospitals could provide birth control lays bare the delicate negotiations involved in preserving the post-WWII "Protestant-Catholic-Jewish" alliance.
(1968) Hare Krishnas
The (mostly white) International Society for Krishna Consciousness provides infrastructure needed by the increasing numbers of India Hindu immigrants arriving in the late 1960s, leading to surprising alliances and adaptations.
(1985) Daoist Gods on the Menu
A photographic journey documenting the physical embodiments of Chinese Daoist gods that are an everyday reality in the nation's numerous Chinese restaurants run by second-generation Fujianese-American immigrants.
(1988) "Gaia TV"
The spiritual streaming network "Gaia TV" as related to the New Age practice of "channeling" and the idea of the "personal divine" in America.
(1996) Pacific Islander Christian Nationalism
The large Tongan-American community in Utah develops its own form of Pacific Islander Christian nationalism, leading to them to the crosshairs of FBI suspicion.
(2009) Sikhs on the Road
Sikhs in America seek religious independence and sovereignty by adopting long-distance trucking as an "ideal job," spreading the image of a traditional warrior figure even as far as the Dallas Cowboys.
(2026) Union Corridor
A square block of Sennott Avenue in Houston recently renamed "Union Corridor," is home to a Vietnamese Buddhist monastery, a masjid, a Hindu Temple, a Syriac Orthox Church, a Baptist Church, and more; its geography and history are emblematic of the project of religious pluralism as a whole.
UNDER
GODS
For the Under Gods Project, 25 writers tell 25 stories of American religious diversity— one for each decade of 250 years— demonstrating the plural and powerful nature of Gods in the U.S., past and present.
Adding an “S” to “Under God” recognizes the variety of religions that have shaped our nation from its beginnings. We invite you to discover surprising people, places, and things, forming an expansive, kaleidoscopic history of religion in America.
