Wenger and Johnson have collected a strong and varied group of articles here, exploring the ways in which “religion,” “US,” and “empire” have mutually constituted and affected one another. The articles take a wide variety of approaches to this exploration – sometimes focusing on how the United States government or nonstate actors have used religious beliefs or practices, or set boundaries around religion as category, to strengthen or resist empire; sometimes focusing on how religion appears in imperial and violent expansion and war in US history; sometimes on how empire has affected the ways in which religion as category or practice is visible or invisible. Some articles have clearer theological commitments than others, but all critique the practice of the US empire, and thus of how religion has been implicated in it.

The book is organized in four thematic but roughly chronological sections – slavery and settler colonialisms (colonial era through mid-19th century), imperial classifications (mid- to late 19th century), entanglements in global networks (late 19th century through early 20th), and dialectics of empire and religion (mid-20th to early 21st century). The overlapping timelines and multiple epistemological approaches are a definite strength of the collection, allowing the reader to encounter the complex and multifaceted question with a wide variety of specialist strengths and creative takes.

Each section is framed by outstanding short essays from the editors; the Introduction, in particular, is a concise and thoughtful explanation of what this question is, how the terms are defined and why, and why it matters, which would be excellent reading for advanced undergrads or grad students. Our understanding of the imperial aspects of US history, and internal and external colonialisms, is missing the full picture without attention to religion, while studying the history of American religions without considering their imbrication in empire is to examine a desiccated imaginary history (my words, not the editors’, but I find the claim entirely convincing).

Each article on its own is densely argued, and I, at least, found something new in all articles that touch on my specialist area (history of missions and race), and even more so in articles outside of my specialty. Again, this wide-ranging aspect of the collection is a strength. As a scholar, I was perforce introduced to questions, terms, subject matter, and discourse I was previously unaware of, or had not articulated fully. Entire arenas of religion and empire playing out in macro, micro, physical, and intellectual and theological histories opened up, providing a window into new ideas that might touch on a reader’s own, or show a way to think differently, make new connections, and learn about completely unfamiliar patterns.

The collection has a strong focus on indigenous American contexts (while noting that the term “religion” is itself not fully useful in that study) and black American religious life (and, again, how that religious life was shaped by/resisted/was complicit in empire). At least in some cases, it was clear that the authors had read other articles in the collection before publication and thus were able to make connections between their ideas, further creating a sense of a vivid, complex, and dynamic conversation.

Among my favorite articles in the collection was Sylvester A. Johnson’s “A Colony Called Freedom: Religion, Empire, and Black Christian Settlers,” exploring the American missions in Liberia in the context of the American Colonization Society’s support of black migration to Africa, and black Christian desires for self-determination and to prove the worth of black Christianity, even as it meant “devastation” for the indigenous African peoples close to their settlements and caught up in their settler colonialism. In the next section, Heather D. Curtis’s “Black Spiritual Protest in Global Imperial Contexts, 1893–1920,” was a neat match for this, with a thoughtful exploration of the lives of Ida B. Wells and Georgia Patton, both black women working for justice out of spiritual conviction, whose different international experiences strengthened their missions while also setting the horrors of lynching in global context. This article would be excellent reading for undergrads, with its clear, easy to grasp focus on the connections and tensions of late 19th century global Protestantism from the point of view of black American Christian women, and introducing the cross-national experience of a Liberian Christian convert, Patton’s protégé, who was witness to a lynching and who then publicly castigated American Christians. I would also set this article alongside Dana Roberts’ work on international Protestant friendship as a mode of mission and justice work.

Another favorite article was Kathleen Holscher’s exploration of Catholic clerical sexual abuse in the Southwest, “The Trouble of an Indian Diocese: Catholic Priests and Sexual Abuse in Colonized Places.” The issue of sexual abuse in missionary contexts is difficult to explore for many reasons (although the Diocese of Gallup is not technically missionary, the pattern of depending upon clergy from elsewhere, who are seen as civilizationally superior, is certainly similar to many missionary contexts). Holscher’s article would also work well for undergrads, clearly explaining the importance of the idea of “disposability” of places and people, as well as the need to consider the theological commitments underlying the centrality of priests, and the theological category of “scandal” in the Catholic context. Combined, these led over and over again to trying, first, to return clerical sexual offenders to grace in a monastic, penitent context, and then to set them once again in “green pastures” for abuse because of the need for a priest providing the sacraments, however questionable and even dangerous that priest might be.

Since I cannot list all of them, for this review, my final favorite article explored the theological ideas underlying modes of 20th-century warfare, Jonathan Ebel’s “Fire from Heaven: Napalm, the Drone, and Evangelical Territoriality in the Age of Empire.” Ebel’s own military experience and American military history and technology become a lens on shifting ideas about just warfare, individual responsibility, territory as body and as geography, and the omniscience of God. Again, this would be a great discussion piece for students; while other articles might fit best in a history or religious studies course, I could also see Ebel’s work being used in a theology course or seminary.