upcoming and Recent Lectures:

• “Law, Religion, and History: An Introduction.” NEH Humanities Institute, Law and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Toolkit for the Humanities Scholar. Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University School of Law. July 14, 2026.

• “Spirits of Empire: Native Americans, the Revolution, and American Religion.” Shaker Village Symposium on American Religious History. Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. June 27, 2026.

• “Spirits of Empire: How Settler Colonialism Made American Religion.” Unitarian Society of New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut. May 13, 2026.

• “Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal.” Ping Institute Faculty Seminar Featured Book Conversation, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. March 19, 2026.

• “Spirits of Empire: How Settler Colonialism Made American Religion.” Department of Classics and Religion, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. March 18, 2026.

• “Native American Christianity.” Invited Lecture, The St. John’s Speaker Series, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Essex, Connecticut. March 15, 2026.

• “Imperial Religion and the Built Environment on Mackinac Island,” Workshop on Religion, Colonialism, and the Built Environment. Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, Columbia University. February 21, 2025.

• “This is Not Our Notion of Christian Liberty: Baptist Formations in a Settler State.” American Society of Church History. San Francisco, California, January 4-7, 2024.

• “Understanding Religious Liberty in a Diverse Nation.” In conjunction with the exhibit, “Acts of Faith: Religion and the American West.” New-York Historical Society, New York. October 6, 2023.

• “‘He Has Not Instructed Them by Books:’ Divine Authority on Kiikapoi Lands.” Invited Paper. Conference, “‘By the Mouth of His Holy Prophets:’ Sacred Discourse in Nineteenth-Century America.” Heidelberg Center for American Studies, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany. May 26, 2023.

• Religion and U.S. Empire. Book panel and discussion with Tisa Wenger and Sylvester Johnson. Center for the Humanities, Tufts University. March 15, 2023.

• Roundtable on Religion and US Empire: Critical New Histories, edited by Tisa Wenger and Sylvester Johnson. American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, November 2022.

• Chair and Comment, “The Politics of Religious Pluralism.” American Political History Conference: The Past, Present, and Future of American Democracy. Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. June 10, 2022.

• “Religious Freedom in the Age of Pandemic.” Panelist. 7th Biennial Conference on Religion and American Culture. Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. June 4, 2022.

• “How Settler Colonialism Made American Religion.” Invited Lecture. Loeb Institute for Religious Freedom, George Washington University. Online, April 15, 2021.

• “Settler Colonialism and American Religion.” Panel, American Historical Association. Online. January 6, 2021.

Blogs and podcasts

• “Imperial Hauntings: Candace Lukasik Interviews Tisa Wenger on Spirits of Empire,” Contending Modernities Conversation, July 2026.

• New Books on Nineteenth-century Religion and US Empire: Sonia Hazard’s Empire of Print, Tisa Wenger’s Spirits of Empire, and Jeff Wheatley’s American Fanatics in conversation. The Immanent Frame, July 2026.

• “Religion, Power, and Indigenous Lands with Tisa Wenger.” Yale Podcast Network, April 7, 2026.

• “The Settler Colonial Roots of American Religion.” Interview by Mark Oppenheimer, Arc Magazine. April 7, 2026.

• “The Author’s Corner with Tisa Wenger.” The Way of Improvement Leads Home Blog. April 6, 2026.

• “Settler Colonialism Reshaped all of American Religion.” Interview by Samuel Hayim Brody, Political Theology Network. March 18, 2026.

• Interview, “The Hidden Role of Mormons in American Religion.” Benjamin Park, Historian. YouTube channel, March 13, 2026.

• Q&A with Tisa Wenger, Guest editor of the Pacific Historical Review Special Issue, “Religion in the Nineteenth-century American West.” November 1, 2023.

• “Religion and U.S. Empire,” with Sylvester Johnson. New Books Network Podcast. March 15, 2023.

• “For What Purposes Has Religious Freedom Been Invoked?” Religion in the American Experience Podcast, National Museum of American Religion. December 28, 2020.

• Religious Studies Project Podcast, “How Religious Freedom Makes Religion,” September 30, 2019.

• From the Desk of Kurt Manwaring, “10 Questions with Tisa Wenger,” September 3, 2019.

• BYU Maxwell Institute Podcast, “The contested history of religious freedom, with Tisa Wenger,” April 16, 2019.

• Religion in American History Blog, “Response to Review Forum on Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal,” March 4, 2018.

• Yale DIvinity School, The Quadcast, “Are There Limits to Religious Freedom? An Interview with Yale Divinity School Professor Tisa Wenger,” January 30, 2018.

• Political Theology Network, “Five Books I Can’t Do Without,” in Books We Love, Part 3,” curator Roberto Sirvent, August 15, 2017.

• Cosmologics Magazine, “Tisa Wenger: Contesting Religious Freedom,” interview by Lewis West, Spring 2017.

  popular writings and essays

• We Have a Religion in Retrospect, Back Pages Series, American Religion, October 2025.

• “Anti-Abortion Laws are an Attack on Religious Freedom,” co-authored with Samira Mehta, 360info.org, July 11, 2022.

• “Religious Freedom After Trump,” Berkley Forum, Georgetown University, December 7, 2020.

• “Why Religious Freedom Won’t Protect Native American Sacred Lands,” Berkley Forum, Georgetown University, February 20, 2018.

• “How Conservative Christians Co-Opted the Rhetoric of Religious Freedom,” Zócalo Public Square, January 23, 2018.

• “Discrimination in the Name of Religion? Slaveholders and Segregationists Did It Too,” Made By History, Washington Post, December 5, 2017.

• “Americans Have Never Agreed on What Religious Freedom Means,” Christian Century, October 16. 2017.

• “The Complexities of Racial and Religious Identities,” African American Intellectual History Society Blog, September 29, 2017.

• “American Religious Freedom: Pride and Prejudice,” Reflections, Yale Divinity School, Spring 2013.