From the colonial period to the present, the Mississippi River has impacted religious communities from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. Exploring the religious landscape along the 2,530 miles of the largest river system in North America, the essays in Gods of the Mississippi make a compelling case for American religion in motion?not just from east to west, but also from north to south. With discussion of topics such as the religions of the Black Atlantic, religion and empire, antebellum religious movements, the Mormons at Nauvoo, black religion in the delta, Catholicism in the Deep South, and Johnny Cash and religion, this volume contributes to a richer understanding of this diverse, dynamic, and fluid religious world.
Foreword \ Catherine L. Albanese and Stephen J. Stein
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Religious Life on the Mississippi \ Michael Pasquier
1. "The Singing of the Mississippi": The River and Religions of the Black Atlantic \ Jon F. Sensbach
2. Religion and American Empire in Mississippi, 1790?1833 \ Sylvester Johnson
3. Movement, Maps, and Wonder: Civil Religious Competition at the Source of the Mississippi River, 1805?1832 \ Arthur Remillard
4. Looking for the New Jerusalem: Antebellum New Religious Movements and the Mississippi River \ Thomas Ruys Smith
5. "Go Down into Jordan: No, Mississippi": Mormon Nauvoo and the Rhetoric of Landscape \ Seth Perry
6. The Mississippi River and the Transformation of Black Religion in the Delta, 1877?1915 \ John M. Giggie
7. The Redemption of Souls and Soils: Religion and the Rural Crisis in the Delta \ Alison Collis Greene
8. Bonfires on the Levee: Place, Memory, and the Sacred in River Road Catholicism \ Justin D. Poché
9. "Big River": Johnny Cash and the Currents of History \ John Hayes
Afterword: "No Home Like a Raft": Repositioning the Narratives of U.S. Religious History \ Thomas A. Tweed
Contributors
Index
