A God-Shaped Nation - by Brook Wilensky-Lanford (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A kaleidoscopic history that shows how the quest to worship freely became one of the nation's most vexing tensions, shaping life for believers and nonbelievers alike

Ever since conquistadores claimed Taino land in the name of their Catholic God and New England Puritans formed their strictly Protestant "city on a hill," religion has been central to American life. Even as some found religious freedom--Rhode Island welcomed the Quakers, Jews, and Baptists that Massachusetts expelled as dissenters--indigenous people and Africans forced into slavery struggled to protect their religious practices. With the constitutional separation of church and state, it fell to the American people to decide: would they sharpen religion's formidable powers of division, or reimagine its creative possibilities?

In A God-Shaped Nation, Brook Wilensky-Lanford follows this essential American tension from first contact through the 2024 election. This is an expansive history of extraordinary religious questions, told through the ordinary people who grappled with them. It is a story of defiance: Anne Hutchinson, preaching against Puritan clergy; Reform rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise serving soft-shell crab to his kosher guests at an 1883 banquet; and Wovoka, a Paiute man who envisioned the Ghost Dance movement, which persisted in the face of violent government repression at Wounded Knee. It is also a story of community: Millerites waiting together in vain for Jesus's return on a rainy October night in 1844; Chinese immigrants bringing Daoist and Buddhist gods to their California temples; Mormons pushing westward to build their "new Zion" in Utah. And in the last fifty years, it has been a story of muscular political power, as the religious right has sought to shape the present and paint the past in its own image.

At a moment when religion penetrates even the most secular aspects of American life, understanding its history is more essential than ever before. "It is in history that the very human work of religion happens," Wilensky-Lanford shows us, "and in ordinary time that even the most carved-in-stone tenets can and do change."

Review Quotes

Praise for Paradise Lust:

"Paradise Lust is a pleasure. Wilensky-Lanford tackles her subject with an appealing mix of serious research and tongue-in-cheek humor. Neither too academic nor too whimsical, the storytelling in Paradise Lust is often irresistible."--Andrea Wulf, The New York Times Book Review

"Absorbing . . . In writing Paradise Lust, Ms. Wilensky-Lanford faced the unenviable task of translating intellectual history into popular history, and her approach relies heavily on speed and whimsy. . . . But her interest in her subject is deep, her narrative is expertly layered, and her interpretations of the seekers' motives are more than convincing."--Jennie Erin Smith, The Wall Street Journal

"A gloriously researched, pluckily written historical and anecdotal assay of humankind's age-old quixotic quest for the exact location of the Biblical garden."--Elle

"One of the most enduring and mysterious places in the Bible, the Garden of Eden has fascinated people around the world since ancient times. Those who believe that it is a real place are . . . a diverse and prominent group of personalities that Brook Wilensky-Lanford describes in her lively new book. . . . The desire to put Eden on the map is a timeless quest to discover our origins, all told in charming detail."--The Daily Beast, a "Daily Beast Must Read"

"Witty and exhaustively researched."--Carl Hartman, The Associated Press

"Wilensky-Lanford approaches her subjects with respect, enthusiasm and conscientious research, and succeeds in doing what the best one-subject historical studies do, which is to reframe history, freshening up long-familiar events."--Liz Coville, San Francisco Chronicle

"Each sojourn Eden-ward is . . . a personal journey into the mirage where unattainable desires and reality meet."--Caroline O'Donovan, The New Republic

About the Author

Brook Wilensky-Lanford is a religion writer, editor, and teacher. The author of Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, and former managing editor of Killing the Buddha, her work has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Republic, and elsewhere. Currently the Associate Director of Sacred Writes Public Scholarship, she holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia University and a PhD in Religion in the Americas from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she lives.