Religion on Tour: Circuses and the Nineteenth-Century American West

This paper examines how railroad circuses shaped religious and cultural narratives of the American West. As one of the most popular forms of entertainment from 1872 to 1920, circuses circulated myths of the West through performances, publicity, and embodied rituals, reaching audiences across North America and beyond. This study explores how circuses commodified Native American life, exoticized non-Christian religions, and staged eclectic religious ceremonies like the one the paper opens with, a memorial service blending a Protestant sermon with Native dances. These spectacles reinforced racial hierarchies and Protestant ideals while simultaneously creating spaces for improvisation and innovation. By tracing the intersections of religion, mobility, and empire, this paper argues that circuses were powerful instruments of U.S. colonialism and myth-making, projecting visions of the West as both wild and morally ordered; a future shaped by ideas of Protestant progress and animated by exoticized spectacle.