Join the University Libraries for our next Mason Author Series event! Professor Lincoln Mullen will discuss his recent book, The Chance of Salvation.

While the United States has a long history of religious pluralism, Americans have often believed their faith determines their eternal destiny. The result is that Americans switch religions more often than any other nation. The Chance of Salvation traces the history of the distinctively American idea that religion is a matter of individual choice. Mullen shows how Americans’ willingness to change faiths has created a shared assumption that religious identity is a decision. As Americans confronted a growing array of religious options in the 19th century, pressures to convert altered the basis of American religion. Evangelical Protestants, Cherokees, enslaved and freed African Americans, Mormons, American Jews, and Catholics each experienced their own patterns of conversion. 

About the Author: Lincoln A. Mullen is Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University. Mullen is a historian of American religious history and nineteenth-century United States history, often working with computational and spatial methods. Professor Mullen teaches digital history, American religious history, and the nineteenth-century United States. He is also affiliated faculty at Mason's Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.

https://publishing.gmu.edu/news/mason-author-series-lincoln-mullen/