Making Empire in the Philippines

This chapter explores the politics of religious freedom in the Philippines during the early years of U.S. rule. It shows how U.S. officials used this ideal to negotiate the relationship between Christianity and secularism, and to classify and control the diverse peoples of the Philippines. Against the backdrop of the Philippine-American War and then of the Moro War, Americans used religious freedom to impose a new church-state separation that served imperial interests by stripping indigenous leaders of their governing authority. At the same time religious freedom became an ambivalent resource for some Filipinos—such as Gregorio Aglipay, revolutionary priest and founder of the Philippine Independent Church—as they struggled to resist and then to navigate the imposition of U.S. imperial control.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter draws connections and comparisons across the varieties of religious freedom talk described in the book. Religious freedom emerges in this book as an eminently malleable discourse, a shared cultural value that can be defined and deployed in many different ways. It has worked historically to shape the contours of religion in opposition to the secular and the political, and the boundaries between racial and religious identities. It has served as a mechanism for U.S. imperialism and an avenue of resistance to empire. The ideal of religious freedom cannot be removed from the coercions of modernity, but like any ideal its prospects and possibilities remain open for future generations to define.

Defining a People

This chapter examines the varieties of religious freedom talk in African American history. It argues that the racial assemblages of the dominant white society severely limited the utility of religious freedom as a way to (re)define African American identity. It begins by showing how often religious freedom worked in support of slavery, segregation, and white supremacy; and how black church leaders rearticulated this freedom as one way to assert the full humanity of black people and to reposition themselves as fully modern, rational and moral modern subjects. The chapter goes on to argue that many of the new religious movements of black urban life—including Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement, the Moorish Science Temple, and the Nation of Islam—used religious freedom talk in their efforts to redefine their communal identity away from the negative valences of blackness, either replacing race with religion or infusing their blackness with a new cosmic significance. But however they defined themselves, the dominant society denied their claims and overwhelmingly dismissed them as fraudulent and overly political rather than legitimately religious. For the vast majority of African Americans, religious freedom provided little escape from the confines of a racialized oppression.

Making American Whiteness

This chapter explores the significance of religious freedom for American Jews, with particular attention to Jewish debates over Zionism and the emergence of the tri-faith movement in the early twentieth century. It argues that in an era of increasingly racialized anti-Semitism, American Jewish appeals for religious freedom both in the United States and abroad helped establish Jewishness as a primarily religious rather than racial identity in American life. In the process, religious freedom talk eased the access of American Jews to the racial status of whiteness in the United States.

Making the Imperial Subject

This chapter explores the role of religious freedom in the Spanish-American War and the subsequent U.S. decision to annex the Philippines. Surveying the views of imperialists and anti-imperialists among Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish leaders, it argues that religious freedom talk provided a powerful rationale for war and empire. While white Protestants used this ideal to reinforce their own cultural authority, Catholics used it to assert their own place as American patriots and imperial administrators. In so doing, they reinforced the claims of Catholic immigrants to the racial status of whiteness in American life.

Making Religion on the Reservation

This chapter explores the dilemmas of religious freedom for a very different colonized population: the indigenous people whose dispossession marked the very foundation of the United States as a settler-colonial society. It explores the limited utility of this ideal for Native Americans in the 1890 Ghost Dance, the Indian Shaker churches of the Pacific Northwest, and the Peyote movement that institutionalized as the Native American Church. While religious freedom claims sometimes served indigenous assertions of cultural and political self-determination, Native people often found their traditions transformed in the process. Across these movements, Indians found their religious freedom claims limited by the cultural biases and coercive structures of settler-colonial rule.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the key concepts of “assemblage” and “religious freedom talk” and offers a brief history of religious freedom as it intersected with race and religion in colonial America—particularly through the figure of John Locke—and in the nineteenth century United States. It shows how this malleable ideal simultaneously forged the U.S. Protestant secular, bolstered U.S. imperialism, and provided colonized and minority populations with a means of resistance. In the process, religious freedom has shaped and reshaped the contours of race and religion across the cultural landscapes of U.S. empire.