Gillian Clark, Christianity and Roman Society - Huntington University

152 BOOK REVIEWS
the confrontation, over seventy Branch Davidians died. “[T]he Branch Davidians
learned,” concludes Kerstetter, “what the Mormons and the Ghost Dancers had
learned…the West had limits when it came to religious freedom” (125).
Yes, but, was it only in the West that there were limits, and did religious freedom in
America ever mean no limits? Kerstetter underscores the contradictions between the
values of religious freedom and the subversion of those same values in his three historical
cases. Beyond this, however, the author’s analysis too often is unsatisfying in its
consistency, precision, and thoroughness.
The book’s introduction and first chapter are meant to set a context for the three
cases; they can easily leave one confused, though. Kerstetter reviews important literature
on the West, but the connection of the literature to his argument too often is ambiguous.
He follows the now old New Western History, considering the West as a place rather than
a moving frontier, yet frontier looms in the background. Moreover, Kerstetter does not
address the potential import of the roughly hundred-year gap between, on the one hand,
the Mormon and the Ghost Dance “frontier” cases, and the Branch Davidian case, on the
other. During this gap, have there not been non-western cases of religious groups with
uneasy relationships, at best, with local and/or national government, e.g., the African
Orthodox Church associated with Marcus Garvey and other black separatist or nationalist
groups? Does this bear on Kerstetter’s argument for the West’s exceptionalism?
Another problematic line of analysis is that of religion and state. In the book’s final
chapter, the author clearly acknowledges that there were some commonalities of the three
groups that made federal intervention at least understandable even if, at best, only
partially justifiable. For one thing, the groups shared a millennialism that fed their
perceptions of the U.S. government as enemy. Sustained discussion, though, of the
dynamics of American nationalism and of governmental prerogatives in the three cases is
less than compelling. Further, there is a larger legal history of religious freedom in the
U.S. that Kerstetter sidesteps. Native American religious freedom, for example, has taken
some decidedly different turns in the West since the first Wounded Knee, as seen with the
return of Blue Lake to the Taos Pueblo and the rise of the Native American Church and
peyote use.
Kerstetter’s final sentences illustrate both the weaknesses and strengths of his book:
“Did religion make a difference in the West? Indeed it did—and does” (177). Yes, but,
isn’t this book about religious liberty in the West? Who said religion did not make a
difference in the West? God’s Country, Uncle Sam’s Land could have been more
compellingly written and more sharply focused. Yet, the author foregrounds religious
freedom in three western cases where it has, or can, too easily be obscured. Also,
Kerstetter provides some historical perspective on issues that are as alive and shifting as
today’s headline news.