Monthly Meeting - Spirits of Empire

Historian Tisa Wenger will talk to us about her new book, *Spirits of Empire: How Settler Colonialism Made American Religion* in which she asserts that American religious history cannot be separated from the nation’s imperial foundations. From the Declaration of Independence onward, U.S. expansion relied on the seizure of Indigenous lands, accompanied by narratives that cast Native peoples as obstacles to “civilization.” Within this context, diverse communities adapted, contested, and reshaped religious categories. She shows how white settlers defined “religion” in ways that supported their political authority, a dynamic she terms "settler secularism." This framework positioned certain traditions as worthy of protection while marking others as primitive or threatening, reinforcing hierarchies that persist today. Tisa Wenger is Professor of American Religious History at Yale and was named a 2021 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 2021. She specializes in the intersections of race, religion, and empire in U.S. history. Her previous works include *We Have a Religion* (2009), *Religious Freedom* (2017), and co-editing *Religion and U.S. Empire* (2022). If you missed her Author Talk at the Unitarian Society of New Haven on May 13, you won't want to miss this! We'll meet for coffee and conversation at 6:30 PM followed by Tisa's talk at 7:00 PM.