God's Country, Uncle Sam's Land: Faith and Conflict in the American West . By Todd M. Kerstetter

God's Country, Uncle Sam's Land: Faith and Conflict in the American West . By Todd M. Kerstetter

Abstract

Book Reviews God’s Country, Uncle Sam’s Land: Faith and Conflict in the American West. By Todd M. Kerstetter. University of Illinois Press, 2006. 224 pages. $36.00. The American West deserves to be called “God’s Country” for many reasons. Its history is saturated with religion, as Todd Kerstetter’s book shows convincingly enough. But the region can also be called “God’s Country” because it is the stuff that myths are made of. In some of its mythic versions, the West is a vast wilderness, a realm of infinite freedom beyond the reach of all humanly created norms and structures. In other mythic versions, it is the frontier, the place where norms and structures meet the wilderness and tame it. The taming has usually been legitimated—and, Kerstetter argues, often actually motivated—by religious values, symbols, and language. And the historical actors who have done the taming have often been sent, supported, or funded by the federal government. Hence “God’s Country” has always also been “Uncle Sam’s Land.” But the writing of history can also be (and perhaps inevitably becomes) the stuff of myth. Kerstetter has shaped his own version of the story of the interaction between religion and federal policy in the