Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1999
Abstract
Ferenc Szasz and Richard Etulain begin their book by remarking that the history of the American West has mostly been studied and told without reference to the religious lives of the people who lived and settled there, and that this omission necessarily reduces our understanding of the region. To remedy the omission, the editors have gathered a group of fellow professors and graduate students to contribute essays on the especially rich variety of religious faiths and institutions of the people of New Mexico over 450 years. Various authors write of the several strains of Catholicism found here (Northern European, Hispanic, and Native American), of a Jewish history going back nearly to the first settlement of "Easterners" in the state, and of the difficulties Native Americans have had and are still having in securing religious freedoms other Americans take for granted. The experience and contributions of several denominations of Protestants are discussed, and some of the Eastern, mystical, and pagan faiths represented in the state are well-covered under the somewhat misleading heading of "Boomer Darhma."
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 19:4 (Fall 1999). Copyright © 1999 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.