Pluralism on the Ground
Professor Emerita Catherine L. Albanese reframes U.S. religious history beyond the Protestant narrative
American religious history has long been viewed through a restrictive, pro-Protestant, and white-supremacist lens, but prominent UC Santa Barbara religious scholar Catherine L. Albanese argues that this narrative fundamentally distorts the reality of U.S. culture.
Speaking at a full-day event hosted by the Walter H. Capps Center and the Department of Religious Studies, Albanese, a J. F. Rowny Distinguished Professor Emerita in Comparative Religions, presented an alternative framework that places marginalized communities at the very center of the American story.
Albanese’s lifelong research—culminating in her latest book, Kaleidoscope: Pluralism, White Supremacy, and American Religious History—challenges traditional historical models by treating African American, Native American, Catholic, and Jewish traditions not as marginal additions to a Protestant foundation, but as intrinsic components of American religiosity. She defines this dynamic as “pluralism on the ground,” a condition where coexisting religious traditions continuously overlap, subtly shifting and influencing one another over time.
Upending the Narrative
This provocative approach dates back to Albanese’s groundbreaking 1981 textbook, America: Religions and Religion.
“The textbook was a total upending of the usual way to do business, because it didn’t start with Protestant America,” said Albanese. By ordering chapters chronologically based on which communities arrived or were present in North America first, she placed Protestantism in chapter four, dismantling a previously uncontested historical timeline.
“There is a current fight against Christian nationalism that is trying to cover and hide history…We can’t just say we’re going to be good patriots and erase all this knowledge of what we have done. We have to say yes, there was a glaring, glaring, glaring horror - but we did good things too.”
To illustrate how this ground-level pluralism operates, Albanese pointed to the shifting dynamics between major religious institutions in the 20th century. This friction often acted as a progressive spark; in the early 1960s, liberal Protestant denominations began explicitly branding themselves as welcoming spaces for gay and lesbian individuals. This cultural shift created a ripple effect, eventually pressuring Catholic bishops to adopt similar, more inclusive language.
The Catholic bishops “were saying they were a welcoming body,” said Albanese, a sign that “they had rethought their attitude toward people who were sexually different and…liberalized a tiny, tiny, tiny bit.”
Ultimately, these internal Christian reforms demonstrate that religious movements are rarely isolated, but are instead almost always the product of different groups influencing one another behind the scenes.
Agency vs. Victimhood
Albanese also pushes back against one-dimensional historical portrayals of Indigenous populations. Drawing insight from Kathleen DuVal’s book Native Nations, Albanese emphasized that Native Americans must be recognized as shrewd political and religious actors rather than mere casualties of history.
“They weren’t just ‘victims’,” noted Albanese. “They were people who were very smart and savvy politically, even if, finally, they were indeed victimized in horrible ways. They weren’t just roll-over-and-lay-down folks.”
Similarly, she credits African American traditions with shaping foundational aspects of broader American secular culture. “Think of American music…the whole way of thinking about music that comes from African Americans,” said Albanese. “We have styles of speechifying, rhetoric—think about Martin Luther King, Jr. – that comes right out of the black church, that way of using rhetoric, using words, to excite people and to change their minds.”
From the structural roots of jazz and spirituals to the distinct, powerful rhetoric of leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., the influence of the Black church remains deeply embedded in the nation’s cultural fabric.
Confronting Modern Mythmaking
Though Albanese retired in 2010, she emphasized that her work remains urgent in the face of contemporary political movements attempting to sanitize American history.
“There is a current fight against Christian nationalism that is trying to cover and hide history,” warned Albanese, noting that public ideas about religion have been increasingly co-opted by “Trumpian politics” seeking a return to a mythical, homogenized 1950s America.
“We can’t just say we’re going to be good patriots and erase all this knowledge of what we have done,” said Albanese. “We have to say yes, there was a glaring, glaring, glaring horror - but we did good things too.”
Ultimately, Albanese insists that confronting a messy past is the only way to build a functional future.
“Our religious history is, like all human experiments, a mixed bag,” said Albanese. “History distinguishes mistakes and celebrates victories, but also it orientates current generations and gives them the resources to imagine something better.”
Cameron Cabrera is a fourth-year student majoring in Communications, minoring in the Journalism track of the Writing Program. Cameron participated in the Berlin summer journalism program, and is a 2025-26 intern for HFA News.