Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age

This ground-breaking study reveals an unorganized and previously unacknowledged religion at the heart of American culture. Nature, Albanese argues, has provided a compelling religious center throughout American history. In a book of remarkable originality and vision, Albanese charts the multiple histories of American nature religion and explores the moral and spiritual responses the encounter with nature has provoked among the Americans. Tracing the connections between movements and individuals both unconventional and established, Albanese treats figures from popular culture, such as the nineteenth-century Hutchinson Family Singers and almanac-version Davy Crockett, as well as historically prominent culture brokers, including Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir.