As the twenty-first century begins, the United States has emerged as not only the most powerful nation on earth, but also by far the most religiously diverse nation ever. Several thousand distinct religious communities live side-by-side in relative harmony, and in any urban area it is not unusual to see a Catholic church down the street from a Buddhist temple and sharing the block with a Jewish synagogue. Not far away may be a Shi’a Muslim mosque, a Hindu temple, or an occult/New Age bookstore; while walking the streets, one could find some Latter-Day Saint missionaries and a team of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Quietly worshiping in nearby apartments might be a coven of neopagan Wiccans or a Christian commune.

To some extent, the United States is a Protestant nation, and the combined membership of the several Baptist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Holiness, Methodist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, and other Protestant churches still collectively constitutes around half of the American public. But whereas at one time they had a dominating presence among America’s religious, they now share the landscape with a thousand competing religious communities that represent the spectrum of the world’s religions. A variety of images have been used to express this diversity, among the best being that of a large mosaic, in which a beautiful picture has been created from bits of tile. In the finished picture, each piece of tile retains its individuality completely. Some colors dominate, but all of the pieces are necessary to the completed product. But it is the duty of the art historian to step back and see the total picture that has been created by the coming together in the shared space of the diverse elements.

American Religions: An Illustrated History is a brief summary of how we have arrived at this most interesting development in the human drama. The story begins at the end of the fifteenth century when Europeans discovered the continent and made their initial contacts with the more than 500 different peoples that inhabited it. There was already great diversity among the Native Americans, and the Europeans injected the different varieties of Christianity and Judaism. Here our story really begins and unfolds as the new settlers conquered the land, pushed aside its original inhabitants, and created a new society that we like to think of as the greatest nation on earth. Any account of the mosaic necessarily requires both a perspective and a considerable amount of interpretation.