Smithsonian exhibit shows religious diversity in early American life

Walk around the Religion in Early America exhibit and a broad picture of faith in the colonial era emerges: there’s a Bible translated into the language of the Wampanoag people, the Torah scroll from the first synagogue in North America, and a text written by a slave who wanted to pass on his Muslim heritage.

“Religion in early America was not just Puritans and the Pilgrims,” said Peter Manseau, curator of the exhibit, which opened recently at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. “It was a story of many different communities with conflicting, competing beliefs, coexisting over time with greater and lesser degrees of engagement with each other.”

The yearlong exhibit, part of the museum’s The Nation We Build Together series of exhibitions, demonstrates the range of religious expression from colonial times through the 1840s.