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UNDER

GODS

250 YEARS | 25 ESSAYS

New stories about the plural and powerful nature of religion in the United States, past and present.

Drawing of the Statue of Liberty against a dark blue background, her torch radiating light

250 YEARS | 25 ESSAYS

(1776) Preamble

(1782) A Country Between

In 1782, American revolutionaries massacred ninety-six indigenous Christians in a country caught between gods, traditions, empires, and rival claims about "what it means for land to be divinely given."

(1790) Enthusiastic Citizens

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) Praying and Shouting

For enslaved African-Americans and their descendents, the "shout" helped mourn the dead, maintain memory, and celebrate renewal, while shaping American religion.

(1809) Harvesting the Sun

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.

Black-and-white illustration of the Statue of Liberty's head and torch under construction, with scaffolding, cables, and tiny workers visible in the top half of the statue. Ships in the water are in the background.

Black-and-white illustration of people standing on a decorative balcony encircling the Statue of Liberty's torch. The people are leaning against the railing and looking outward. The statue's large hand grips the torch below the balcony. Boats are floating in the water below and a bridge is visible in the distance.

(1825) A Jewish Utopia

Costumed and proclaiming himself the "Judge of Israel," Mordecai Manual Noah announced the creation of a "Jewish haven" on Grand Island, near Buffalo, New York; it was emblematic of the "burned-over district" utopian movements, and their obsession with reforming practices around women and the family.

(1830) The First Mormon

Latter-Day Saint origin stories usually focus on Joseph Smith Jr., but miss his most important convert: his mother.

(1847) Wakara and the West

As a rival sovereign and a founder in his own right, the Ute leader Wakara shaped trade routes, directed settlements, controlled its labor systems, and determined where and how empires could move, forcing expansionist pioneers to negotiate the terms of their Manifest Destiny.

(1850) The Psychic Highway

New religious ideas, including Adventism, the AME church, abolitionism, and Spiritualism spread thanks to a marvel of 19th-century engineering: the Erie Canal.

(1855) Prophetic Perseverance

Separated by a century, two Black Muslim men in the Carolinas—Omar ibn Said and Sufi Shaykh Arona Faye—together tell a deep history of enslavement and resistance, as seen in the Islamic community established on the site of a former plantation and works to repair the lasting traumas of racism.

(1868) The Gates Ajar

After the Civil War, a grieving nation struggled to understand the mysteries of death. The forgotten bestselling novel The Gates Ajar brought new views of the afterlife into mainstream American religion.

(1880) A Heathen Appeal

In the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the self-described first Confucian missionary to the United States Wong Chin Foo advocated fair treatment for all through confrontations with his rival, the anti-Chinese labor leader Denis Kearney.

(1890) Ghost Dance

An Indigenous ritual brought source of hope, revelation, and innovation as it became the largest intertribal religious movement in US history. Though violently suppressed, it long outlasted its presumed destruction.

(1911) The Swami's Patron

Following the visibility of Swami Vivekananda at the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago, a legal drama in New England led the American public to consider the question: Could Hinduism drive an American woman insane?

Black-and-white photograph of the top of the Statue of Liberty's copper head and crown. The perspective appears to have been taken from the statue's torch. Smiling people are looking up from an opening beneath the statue's crown.

Black-and-white photograph of the face (like a mask) of the Statue of Liberty, mounted within a wooden support framework on grass. A man stands beside the statue's face to the right.

(1912) A Baháí Road Trip

On a nine-month US tour, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá challenged American ideas on war, race, gender, and the future.

(1923) How the Shakers Became Furniture

Shaker crafts that fill galleries and design magazines are part of a larger story of a celibate, ecstatic communal movement committed to gender and racial equality, spiritual perfection, and divine love.

(1927) Eva Jessye's Spirituals

Celebrated Harlem Renaissance choral conductor Eva Jessye published a collection of unique spirituals from her childhood as an "Exoduster" with Afro-Cherokee roots in rural Kansas, offering them as a unique cultural heritage and universal spiritual resource.

(1942) Buddhists Behind Barbed Wire

Three objects from World War II-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) Jazz in a Muslim Key

The Ahmadiyya Muslim movement, originally from India, drew many Americans of all nationalities to Islam in the early-mid twentieth century, including Yusef Lateef and numerous other jazz musicians.

(1958) God Bless the Pill

When the diaphragm became the center of a religious controversy in New York City hospitals, Protestant and Jewish clergy joined physicians and activists in a public campaign for contraceptive access, laying bare the challenges of preserving newly formed interfaith alliances.

(1968) Love Feast

The Hare Krishna movement grew from a Second Avenue storefront into a nationwide network built largely by white American converts. Yet as growing numbers of Indian Hindus arrived in the US, a religious infrastructure was waiting for them.

(1985) Gods on the Menu

A photographic journey documents 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) Tongans in Zion

As the Tongan-American community in Utah developed its own form of Pacific Islander Christian nationalism, they found themselves in the crosshairs of FBI suspicion.

Black-and-white photograph of the Statue of Liberty against a bright, white background, viewed from a low angle and starting around the statue's chest level, showing her draped robe, face, crown, raised arm, and bottom of her torch.

Black-and-white illustration, using dense horizontal and crosshatched lines, of the Statue of Liberty, viewed from a high perspective above the surrounding harbor and cityscape. The statue is centered in the foreground, shown from above the podium, and water, boats, buildings, and shorelines are in the background.

(2002) Coyote Relics

After a debate over a Spanish-language Mass, a Catholic parish in Tulsa, Oklahoma, decided to embrace its immigrant community and build the nation's first shrine to Saint Toribio Romo, the patron saint of undocumented immigrants.

(2009) Truckin' Sikh

Seeking religious independence and sovereignty by adopting long-distance trucking as an "ideal job," Sikhs in America have spread the image of a traditional warrior figure even as far as the Dallas Cowboys.

(2026) Belief on the Bayou

A single square block of Sennott Avenue in Houston is home to a Vietnamese Buddhist monastery, an Islamic masjid, a Hindu Temple, a Syriac Orthodox Church, a Baptist Church, and more; its geography and history offer a glimpse of one possible future of the American religious landscape.

UNDER

GODS

For the Under Gods Project,
25 contributors tell 25 stories of religious diversity in the United States—one for each decade of 250 years—demonstrating the influence of the nation's many people and their gods, past and present.

Adding an "s" to “Under God” recognizes the variety of religions that have shaped the US from its beginnings. We invite you to discover surprising people, places, and things, forming an expansive history of religion in America.

Black-and-white close-up photograph of the Statue of Liberty's torch, with restoration scaffolding surrounding the torch. The torch includes a decorative balcony with curved railings and floral details encircling the torch. The a few of the statue's fingers are visible holding the torch below. The Manhattan cityscape, with the Twin Towers on the left, are visible in the background.

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