This timeline lists just some of the major events
affecting the religious history of the American West. For a more
detailed timeline of U.S. religious history generally, consult
the American
Religions Timeline Project, created by graduate students at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University.
| August 6, 1801 |
A large camp meeting in Cane Ridge,
Kentucky, marked the beginning of the "Great Religious
Revival of the American West." |
| March 26, 1830 |
Joseph Smith published The
Book of Mormon. |
| May 26, 1830 |
Indian Removal Act resulted in
in the forced removal of several native groups in the eastern
U.S. from their sacred lands to lands west of the Mississippi. |
| June 27, 1844 |
Joseph Smith, leader of Mormonism,
was lynched by a mob in Carthage, Illinois. |
| July 1845 |
New York newspaper editor John
O'Sullivan coined the phrase “Manifest Destiny” to describe
the European-American drive to move westward, assuming that
divine providence had willed them that land. |
| July 22, 1847 |
The first group of Mormon immigrants
entered the Salt Lake Valley and founded Salt Lake City, Utah. |
| September 25, 1890 |
The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) publicly renounced the practice
of polygamy. |
| December 29, 1890 |
U.S. soldiers killed around 200
Sioux in the Massacre at Wounded Knee, in South Dakota. |
| December 27, 1899 |
Champion of the temperance movement,
Carrie Nation, helped demolish her first saloon in Medicine
Lodge, Kansas. |
| April 13, 1906 |
William J. Seymour led the Azusa
Street Revival in Los Angeles. This was a key event in the
rise of Pentecostalism. |
| January 1, 1923 |
Aimee Semple McPherson founded
the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, a Pentecostal
denomination centered in Los Angeles. |
| June 10, 1935 |
Founding of Alcoholics Anonymous
in Akron, Ohio. |
| May 9, 1939 |
The Roman Catholic Church beatified
the first Native American, Kateri Tekakwitha. |
| June 8, 1978 |
LDS Church officially terminated
a policy of denying African Americans priesthood ordination
and other rituals. |
| November 30, 1987 |
In Lyng v. Northwest Indian
CPA, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed a road to be constructed
through American Indian sacred land. |
| April 19, 1993 |
Fire at the Branch Davidian complex,
begun during a standoff between ATF and Davidians, led to
the deaths of 86 believers, including movement leader David
Koresh. |
| March 23, 1997 |
Thirty-nine members
of the small movement Heaven's Gate committed mass suicide
in Rancho Santa Fe, California, over the course of three days.
|
