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Article: Gods of War, Gods of Peace: How the Meeting of Native and Colonial Religions Shaped Early America.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Church History
- Article date:
- September 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 American Society of Church History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Gods of War, Gods of Peace: How the Meeting of Native and Colonial Religions Shaped Early America. By Russell Bourne. New York: Harcourt, 2002. xv + 425 pp. $28.00 cloth.
For most readers of this journal, Russell Bourne's thesis will come as no surprise. An ambitious survey of nearly two hundred years of interaction between Euro-American settlers and American Indians, Bourne's book asserts that the Encounter was "intrinsically religious," and that religion shaped the course of early America. Stated differently, the first half of American history is a story of contested faiths, as both Indians and colonists drew upon their gods both to make sense of and to control ...