On Failing Generatively: A Response
by Thomas A. Tweed
I’m grateful to the Roundtable contributors for their generous reflections on the themes we used in Retelling and those that might hold promise for the future. I agree with almost everything they have said, and I’m inclined to just cheer as they illumine what we obscured. But perhaps it would help if I provide context about the volume and note how my thinking aligns with theirs.
When colleagues asked me privately what I hoped to accomplish, I said I hoped Retelling would fail generatively. The book couldn’t offer fully-formed new narratives that would change the field, but maybe it could fail in ways that advanced the conversation about how to tell the story. My own thinking about the project began with comments at a Harvard conference on the Protestant Establishment in 1989. Then, with support from the Lilly Endowment and the Pew Charitable Trusts, I convened contributors. By 1994 I published a project description. A conference session followed the next year, and the volume appeared in 1997.
Someone else might be better situated to describe the book’s reception. But, from my perspective, it’s hard to convey how divisive it seemed at the time. A draft of my Introduction circulated widely: for example, a now-distinguished scholar was asked about it at a Ph.D. defense—before the book appeared! When it was published, the divided reception seemed partly but not only generational, and, among those who shared their views with me, strident critics tended to believe narrators should place White mainline Protestant men at the center of the story, while those who challenged that view were more likely to express appreciation. I attended a conference after the book appeared, for instance, and, to my surprise, the keynote address was a passionate denunciation of my Introduction, though Retelling also elicited unexpected support, as at another conference, when a prominent evangelical historian stood to praise the book’s approach. My co-authors and I had heard the criticisms before, however, since I invited historians who might disagree to offer comments at our meetings, and Edwin Gaustad, David Hall, R. Laurence Moore, Mark Noll, and Leigh Schmidt improved the book. (By the way, if you’re planning a collaborative project, I’d recommend that approach: invite criticism early and often, listen deeply and respectfully, and then voice your judiciously argued dissent.)
In any case, I did notice that some scholars of US religion talked more about narratives after Retelling appeared, debating the most useful themes, and, to my delight, contributors to this Roundtable have picked up that conversation. So, let me consider some themes they have highlighted.
First, on time and space. John Harding and Esiteli Hafoka praise the widened geographical frame, as in the Retelling chapters by William Westfall from the Canadian border and Laurie Maffly-Kipp on the Pacific World. I appreciate John’s observation that the reframed mainland narrative can show “how Asian voices have influenced North American religious discourses” and Esiteli’s suggestion that Tongan narratives can help reimagine Oceania’s religious history. I also might note that we planned two more chapters—inviting contributors to retell the story from the Atlantic World and from the Mexican border. Those promising pieces weren’t able to be completed, so I made the tough—and perhaps foolish—decision to publish the chapters we had.
On the theme of sites, which Isaiah Ellis mentions, I agree the field hasn’t made good “on the potential of a site-based analysis.” Narrators still center the event, the person, or the process, and not the themes of displacement, or moving, and emplacement, or place-making, as I do in my early, recent, and forthcoming work.[1] Encouraging more place-centered analysis might require, as Isaiah suggests, expanding the narrative frame to include the hemisphere and analyzing the “silent structures” that create spiritual spaces—and perhaps, as Samira Mehta proposes, attending to “absences,” noticing who’s there and not there.
And I still think gender, which Samira discusses, and sexuality, which Sarah Imhoff considers, are useful themes. As Sarah notes, the “staying power” of Ann Taves’ chapter is its emphasis on the interplay of the biological and the symbolic, as well as its potential for hinting at new stories. I also agree that, as Samira says, Braude’s chapter on “women’s history” set the stage for more groundbreaking work as well as for “the turn to gender studies.” Both Braude and Taves offered perspective-changing narratives that foreshadowed new accounts.
As Dana Logan and Daniel Vaca point out, the themes of ritual and economy also have promise, even if we might want to change the terms or shift the focus. In recent years, economic themes have meant much more than “market models,” and demand-and supply-side interpretations. There has been a Business Turn in US religious history, and increased interest in religion’s entanglement with capitalism, including rich analyses of “consuming religion,” “commercial religion,” and “Christian free enterprise.” As Dana notes, despite the insights of Tamar Frankiel’s chapter on ritual, our key terms for symbolic action also have changed. And she seems right to suggest it would help to “historicize” terms and consider alternatives, including possession and performance. The motif of performance might help, for example, by alerting us to how historical figures have performed masculinity, Whiteness, and Americanness.
Like Brandon Bayne and Tiffany Hale, I also see the advantages of contact and colonialism as narrative themes, motifs that Catherine L. Albanese and Joel Martin used. I appreciate Brandon’s warning that scholars must attend to “asymmetric power” as they recount the history of Indigenous Peoples’ complex responses to colonial encounters, a point some project participants also raised at the time. And I agree with Tiffany’s suggestion that we foreground ethical considerations, not only as we ponder Indigenous traditions and colonial forces but as we seek “solutions to some of the most pressing issues we face today.” For me, that means tracing the big lifeway transitions, from foraging to farming to factories to fiber optics, and asking how religion made things better and made things worse, including for descendants of the enslaved, the maligned, and the displaced. It means asking to what extent religion has helped devotees meet the conditions for individual, communal, and environmental flourishing, and chronicling how spiritual resources eased or intensified crises of sustainability.[2]
Whichever theme contributors and readers come to advocate, it might help to recall, as I said then and believe today, “individuals and groups excluded from narratives are excluded from more than stories” (2). So, there are always more stories, better stories, to tell. And hesitant narrators can take heart. As this generous exchange has reminded me, even generative failures sometimes can help.
[1] Thomas A. Tweed, Religion in the Lands That Became America: From the Ice Age to the Information Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming)
[2] Tweed, Religion in the Lands That Became America.
Thomas A. Tweed is the Harold and Martha Welch Professor of American Studies and Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He is also Faculty Fellow in the Institute for Latino Studies, the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion, and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Tweed edited Retelling U.S. Religious History and co-edited Asian Religions in America: A Documentary History. Two books won the AAR award for excellence: Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami and America's Church: The National Shrine and Catholic Presence in the Nation's Capital. Harvard University Press published Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion in 2006, and Oxford University Press published Religion: A Very Short Introduction in 2020. His forthcoming book from Yale is called Religion in the Lands That Became America: From the Ice Age to the Information Age.