Uncovers the marginalization of religious voices in early American print culture

There was a diversity of religious currents in early America. Yet, when it came to disseminating their ideas, they were not on an equal playing field. Sacred Voices, Printed Silences charts the history of early American print publication from the margins, exploring the aspirations and disappointments of non-Protestant writers whose works struggled to find their way into print.

Far from being a religiously neutral technology, the book argues that the early American printing press was too heavily steeped in Anglo-American Protestant culture to facilitate a free religious marketplace. While the immediate reasons for religious texts’ exclusions were not outrightly theological, publishers commonly factored into their decision-making their relationships with local Protestant ministers, institutions, and missionaries. The result was a public religious culture that gave far more space to Anglo-American Protestant authors than to the diverse religious communities around them.

The publication histories of manuscripts by racialized and heterodox writers across British North America reveal how cultural barriers to print were built into the financial structures, mechanical design, and social networks of the press. Sacred Voices, Printed Silences cautions against assumptions that the absence or underrepresentation of religious voices in the printed record was either circumstantial or accidental. Instead, it asks readers to consider how different media technologies are often designed for the use and benefit of some religious communities, and not others.