American Fanatics - (North American Religions) by Jeffrey Wheatley

Book Synopsis

Shows how religious fanaticism became a tool used to police subversive and targeted religions at home and abroad

In 1822, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the "atmosphere of our country is unquestionably charged with a threatening cloud of fanaticism." Indeed, during the nineteenth century the United States was full of radical theologies, messiahs, utopian dreams, passionate exhortations, and sacred violence. This book seeks to uncover the history, rationales, and effects of understandings of religious fanaticism, and how the term was wielded to describe and denigrate a diverse array of religious groups in the United States.

American Fanatics traces the development and popularization of religious fanaticism--a precursor to today's categories of religious terrorism, radicalism, and extremism--and explores the violence hidden in its usage. From the Second Great Awakening in the early 1800s to the US occupation of the Philippines in the early 1990s, the book follows the rise of the concept through distinct conflicts over evangelical revivals, abolition, literature, psychiatry, and colonial anthropology. It charts how the term "fanatic" started out as a marker for excessive religious practices, but evolved into a religio-racial category that framed resistance to power as overly emotional, delusional, and inherently violent.

American Fanatics illuminates how from the colonial period to the nineteenth century, Americans transformed "fanaticism" from a term of Christian theology into one of religio-racial security, wielding it as a tool of domestic and imperial governance.

Review Quotes

"Showing how talk--and writing--about "fanaticism" fed a racialized politics of US empire at home and abroad, Wheatley's book reveals the violence and resistance embedded in the work of categorizing and policing religion."--Pamela E. Klassen, author of The Story of Radio Mind: A Missionary's Journey on Indigenous Land

"A well-researched and conceptually ambitious effort to understand a term people use for what they do not understand. In his nuanced account of how a theological concept was appropriated within religo-racial discourses across historical periods and national contexts, Wheatley's history represents the best of what religious studies has to offer to make sense of the specter of fanaticism in the past as well as in the overheated rhetoric of the present."--Finbarr Curtis, author of Going Low: How Profane Politics Challenges American Democracy

"An illuminating, insightful and timely study of how the accusation and diagnosis of fanaticism has played a crucial role in shaping the nexus of politics, religion, and race throughout the history of American power- from the struggles over the abolition of slavery to the long arc of colonialism and empire."--Alberto Toscano, author of Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea

"In this beautifully written book, Jeffrey Wheatley shows how the specter of the fanatic developed in service to racial and colonial rule. Even further, by telling the stories of people deemed fanatics, he resists false dichotomies between 'religious and 'political' motivations to show how power moves in unpredictable ways."--Tisa Wenger, author of Spirits of Empire: How Settler Colonialism Made American Religion

About the Author

Jeffrey Wheatley is Assistant Professor of Religion at Iowa State University.