Excerpt from Uncle Sam's Church: His Creed, Bible, and Hymn-Book This Republic is on the eve of stirring events. The New Patriotism that is in the air is but a Divine instinct of preparation for them. Our White Navy is something more than a harmless symbol of National power and pride. It is not a flock of doves. It means Peace only when that is consistent with Justice and Honor. It would be ignoble to avoid the path of our manifest destiny in the Western World. We shall soon be confronted with pressing questions of Annexation which cannot be shirked without discredit to our Mission. Socialists, with deceptive olive branches, and Anarchists, with real daggers, torches, and bombs, are menacing the institutions that are our heri tage, bought by the Fathers with so great a price of blood and treasure. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

While many studies of religion in the West have focused on the region's diversity, freedom, and individualism, Todd M. Kerstetter brings together the three most glaring exceptions to those rules to explore the boundaries of tolerance as enforced by society and the U.S. government.God's Country, Uncle Sam's Landanalyzes Mormon history from the Utah Expedition and Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 through subsequent decades of federal legislative and judicial actions aimed at ending polygamy and limiting church power. It also focuses on the Lakota Ghost Dancers and the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota (1890), and the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas (1993). In sharp contrast to the mythic image of the West as the "Land of the Free," these three tragic episodes reveal the West as a cultural battleground--in the words of one reporter, "a collision of guns, God, and government." Kerstetter asks important questions about what happens when groups with a deep trust in their differing inner truths meet, and he exposes the religious motivations behind government policies that worked to alter Mormonism and extinguish Native American beliefs.