Course description – How have religious people, institutions, values, and beliefs shaped American society in US history? How have religious communities, ideas, and practices, in turn, been shaped by American society? To explore these questions, this course offers a broad introduction to American religious history from colonial contact with the lands that would become the United States to the present. The course is organized around four major themes: (1) religion, democracy, and state formation; (2) religion and race; (3) religion, gender, and sexuality; and (4) religion and capitalism. By semester’s end, students will gain competency in each of these areas and will be able to describe how religion, society, and culture all shape each other in mutually constitutive ways. In moment when politicians, pundits, and faith leaders all alike make claims about America’s religious past, students will learn to think historically and analytically about a wide range of religious and social movements in US history—a view of the past with an eye towards the future we all create together.