Case Statement: I am particularly interested in discussing religious history’s place at sites operated by public agencies such as the National Park Service [NPS]. How can and should site staff members incorporate religion into their interpretive offerings given constitutional separations between church and state? When does “interpreting” the past beliefs of others become “proselytizing” in the present? These questions highlight the wider governmental debate, detailed in Thomas Bremer’s case study of San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, Blessed With Tourists (2004), over how to best preserve American culture without offering material support to particular religious denominations. How can public agencies learn from the historical interpretive experiences of the LDS Church and other denominations? How should public histories of religion differ from “insider” narratives designed for denomination members? And how might site managers differentiate sectarianism and religiosity, on one hand, from the shared American civil religion identified by scholars such as Robert Bellah?
I look forward to discussing best practices for interpreting religious history for diverse public audiences, especially at sites where religion’s influence has to this point been overshadowed by other interpretive themes. Incorporating religion’s impact on abolitionism, national exceptionalism, and Southern Lost Cause mythology, to offer some examples, would strengthen overall battlefield interpretations of the Civil War’s causation and consequences. As Edward Linenthal noted in 2008, religion offers the most “appropriate new direction for an even richer and more exciting NPS plan of engagement with the public.” But what should this new engagement look like in practice?
Bio: I am a first-year history doctoral student at the University of Notre Dame, specializing in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American religion and popular memory. My current research focuses on Father William Corby and Catholic commemorations of the American Civil War. I hold a bachelor’s degree in political theory from Michigan State University’s James Madison College and a master’s degree in American history from West Virginia University. At Notre Dame, I serve on the Center for Social Concerns Graduate Student Advisory Council and am a member of the university’s Bowman Creek Restoration Project, a multidisciplinary civic engagement and urban uplift program in South Bend, Indiana. I am also a member of the NCPH Membership Committee and have served during the past five summers as a NPS interpretive ranger, most recently at Manassas National Battlefield Park in Virginia.