Research
ResearchMy research interests continue to focus on issues of religion and culture, especially regarding tourism and its implications for collective and personal identities. Living in Memphis is an ideal opportunity to explore these issues, with sites like Graceland, the Rev. Al Green's Full Gospel Tabernacle, the Lorraine Motel, the headquarters of the Church of God in Christ, and the World Overcomers Outreach Ministries Church, with its Statue of Liberation Through Christ (seen in the photo above). But although this rich environment for thinking about religion in American culture keeps challenging my assumptions, my formal research efforts are currently focused farther afield.
I have been working on a history of religion in Yellowstone National Park. This project will recount how religions have been practiced in America's first national park, but it also will address issues far beyond the park’s boundaries. These include the ways that Americans have imagined the spiritual aspects of the American land, of nature, and the environment, and also how they have thought of nationhood in religious terms.
Right now, however, much of my scholarly attention is on a textbook project I am undertaking with Blackwell Publishing. I am writing a history of religion in America that will focus on religious diversity. The historical narrative will draw attention not only to the wide variety of religious communities, traditions, beliefs, and practices that have constituted the American religious landscape, but it also will situate the history of religions in the United States within global contexts that began long before Europeans first established settlements in the Americas. This textbook will also equip students with conceptual tools for critical reflection on the dilemmas and opportunities of religious people today, especially in regard to religious, ethnic, racial, gender, and class differences.