ABSTRACT
The story of religion in America is the story of many religions all developing alongside each other. The exploration of the North American continent was undertaken by native peoples long before the arrival of Europeans. They knew the land, drew maps, and claimed space. By the twentieth century, the diversity was so expanded that it was renamed "pluralism," a term more appropriate to describe the situation when a nation had become a sampler of all the religions of the globe. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the United States stands in closer relation to other nations than at previous time in its history. Despite the chant of "America First" that characterized President Donald Trump's political agenda, commerce and finance are part of a global net, as are music and art and much in between. The space of the American West, typically experienced as beautiful, dangerous, rich, and wondrous, was of paramount importance for the religious history of the nation.
