Religion in the Modern American West

Sociology of Religion, Summer, 2004 by Janet Bennion

Religion in the Modern American West, by FERENC MORTON SZASZ, University of Arizona Press, 2000, 270 pp.; $35.00 (cloth) $19.95 (paper)

On my way home from the University of Toronto, where I had presented my work on Fundamentalist Mormon communities, I flipped open Szasz's Religion in the Modern American West and found I could not put it down for the long five-hour flight. I wished that I had read such a comprehensive history of religious classifications earlier in my career.

What defines religion in the West? Most historical analyses of the American West have ignored the importance of religion in influencing sociocultural life. For example, Holthaus et al (1991), Wrobel and Steiner (1997), and Matsumoto and Allmendinger (1999) have all neglected to address the nature of religious pluralism or provide any assumptions about a unique western ideological character in their histories. Their accounts, rather, are focused on the "new western" themes of race, class, and gender.

Eloquently and empirically, Szasz fills the gap in the literature by providing the first historical overview of religion in the modern American Western context. He aptly describes the western migration of religious life from frontier beginnings in the late nineteenth-century to contemporary secularism in the late twentieth century. His volume is a unique mirror into the struggles of the personalities that endured the hardships of the weather-torn Plains and life in the harsh, unpredictable Great Basin: Oklahoma migrant workers, Texas cowboys, militant Millennialists, and neo-Evangelical popularities--all of whom were trying to mesh their Catholic/Protestant/Jewish roots to meet their changing socioeconomic and cultural needs.

According to Szasz, the West is unique in its religious expression. Throughout its history it has never produced a single religious mainstream. Most societies have had the need to introduce and maintain a singular mechanism of social control, but as Szasz aptly illustrates, the religious pluralism of the West makes such social controls impossible, or at the very least, these controls are weakened by ethnic and religious diversity and the emphasis on individualistic secularism. In fact, with the exception of the Mormon Church, there was been no real cultural hegemony or mainstream church in the West.

The West, as described by Szasz, is defined by three prominent themes: pluralism, individualism, and social pragmatism. He demonstrates the unique character of these themes as translated into a western context: the eclectic drive of personality, the compelling force of consumerism/secularism, and the ever-present spirit of frontierism/utopianism. As a result of these drives, the West has been selected by innumerable outcasts and "kingdom-building" dreamers, minority faiths and social "deviants," fundamentalists and modernists, evolutionists and creationists alike--all seeking to alleviate problems associated with growth and how to live in the modern world.

Szasz further suggests that each geographic area of the west seems to redefine religious meaning to its own context, i.e. "geography is destiny." In Texas, for example, you can find a unique cowboy religion that created a synthesis of rope-blistering, wind-blinding pragmatism and a belief in a benevolent Creator who will temper storms and help gather the herd. In Utah, where Mormons unite against Gentile opposition to their unique Puritanical ethos (and former polygamous practices), they have established a formidable economic and spiritual order which protects them from Babylon and provides internal social aid without reliance on any government welfare. And in Hollywood, where actors and the media determine values and character, new movements embracing synergetic individualism and intensity of experience dominate the religious landscape. In short, whatever the people need in their lives, in their geographic environment, is provided for in a malleable, creative ideology--regardless of doctrine, tradition, or precedence.

Although the religious West actually stemmed from traditional and national trends, westerns have "bent these trends along their own trajectories." From 1890-1920, for example, religious life in the west drew heavily upon the "social gospel" and less on ethnic and sectarian differences between the three traditional faiths--Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism. What united them was the need to provide hospitalization for tuberculosis victims, food and shelter for the impoverished migrants, and adequate education for masses. According to Szasz, the biblical kingdom of God and the individual version of economic justice were blended in western America. As part of this pragmatism, several agricultural movements were developed that have shown remarkable resistance to change, such as the Mormon Stake Farm system and the Hutterite communities of North Dakota and Montana. (I recommend the use of Vogt and Albert's study (1970) of four Rimrock, New Mexico cultures which illustrates the differential longevity patterns between Texan Pentecostals, Utah Mormons, Zuni Natives, and Hispanic Catholics.)