Nathan Rives
Dr. Nathan S. Rives
Assistant Professor of History
Office: Lindquist Hall 255
Phone: 801-626-6706
Email: nathanrives@weber.edu
Research & Teaching Areas
- American Religious History
- Early American Republic
- Civil War Era
- Religious Studies and World Religions
Degrees
- Ph.D., Brandeis University (2011)
- B.A., Brigham Young University (2001)
Courses
- HIST 1700 American History
- HIST 2700 History of the United States to 1877
- HIST 2710 History of the United States since 1877
- HIST 3110 American Ideas and Culture
- HIST 3250 Religion in American History
- HIST 4030 The New Nation, 1800-1840
- HIST 4040 Civil War and Reconstruction
- HIST 4130 Utah History
- HIST 4985 Historical Research and Methods
- HIST 4990 Senior Seminar
- SBS 1550 Introduction to World Religions
- SBS 2950 Capstone
Biography
Dr. Nathan S. Rives specializes in American religious history, with particular interests in the period of the early American republic. His newly published book is titled The Religion-Supported State: Piety and Politics in Early National New England. In New England, a region where tax-supported religion persisted into the early 1830s, religion expanded its political presence in the public sphere in new ways, creating what he calls a “religion-supported state.” His book shows how questions of religious liberty and the separation of church and state have been shaped by public debates about the moral implications of religious truth and error.
He has begun a new project that examines networks of bible societies that formed across the Atlantic world in the early 19th century — especially in the U.S., Britain, and Germany — which stood at the intersection of emerging networks of modern Christian thought and organizing, transportation, and finance.
Dr. Rives joined the Department of History at 91¶ÌÊÓƵ as an adjunct instructor in 2011. He became a full-time instructor in 2018 and assistant professor in 2024.
Publications
Books
- The Religion-Supported State: Piety and Politics in Early National New England. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2022.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
- “‘Is Not This a Paradox?’ Public Morality and the Unitarian Defense of State-Supported Religion in Massachusetts, 1806-1833,” New England Quarterly 86, no. 2 (June 2013).
Book Reviews
- Review of Val Holley, Frank J. Cannon: Saint, Senator, Scoundrel (University of Utah Press, 2020), New Mexico Historical Review (Summer 2023 91¶ÌÊÓƵ).
- Review of Kenneth A. Briggs, The Invisible Bestseller: Searching for the Bible in America (Eerdmans, 2016), Christianity and Literature 68, no. 3 (June 2019).
- Review of Kyle B. Roberts, Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783-1860 (University of Chicago Press, 2016), Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 87, no. 1 (March 2018).
- Review of Paul D. Hanson, A Political History of the Bible in America (Westminster John Knox Press, 2015), Church History and Religious Culture 96, no. 3 (Fall 2016).
- Review of T. J. Tomlin, A Divinity for All Persuasions: Almanacs and Early American Religious Life (Oxford University Press, 2014), The Journal of Religion 96, no. 2 (April 2016).
- Review of Shelby Balik, Rally the Scattered Believers: Northern New England’s Religious Geography (Indiana University Press, 2014), Journal of the Early Republic 35, no. 3 (Fall 2015).
- Review of James S. Kabala, Church-State Relations in the Early American Republic, 1787-1846 (Pickering and Chatto, 2013), Ohio Valley History 13, no. 3 (Fall 2013).
- Review of J. Rixey Ruffin, A Paradise of Reason: William Bentley and Enlightenment Christianity in the Early Republic (Oxford University Press, 2008), Journal of the Early Republic 31, no. 3 (Fall 2011).
Reference Works
- Co-author with Raymond S. Wright III, Mirjam J. Kirkham, Saskia Schier Bunting, Ancestors in German Archives: A Guide to Family History Sources (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2004).