"Fanatics, Radicals, Mountebanks": Writing on American Religion, Thinking with Gilbert Seldes's *The Stammering Century*

"This panel discusses Gilbert Seldes’s classic 1928 work The Stammering Century. We analyze the book's context, aims, and scope before diving into a longer discussion of how to approach the writing of the history of religion. Seldes wrote about nineteenth-century American religion, specifically the “cults and manias,” the “fanatics, and radicals, and mountebanks.” An understanding of these people and events, he argued, might “supply a background in American history for the cults and manias of our own time.” One suggestion of this panel is that that, while there are plenty of differences between the 1920s and 2020s, they share this background.
How can scholars and journalists of religion think with Seldes about religion not just the nineteenth century but also the present? How does popular religion, including the sensational and seemingly scammy, illuminate American life, at local levels and across state and even national boundaries?"