Nathan Rives

Dr. Nathan S. Rives
Instructor of History

Office: Lindquist Hall 255
Phone: 801-626-6706

Research & Teaching Areas

▪ American Religious History
▪ Early American Republic
▪ Civil War Era

Degrees

▪ Ph.D., Brandeis University (2011)
▪ B.A., Brigham Young University (2001)

Courses

▪ HIST 1700 American Civilization
▪ 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 Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, 1840-1877
▪ HIST 4985 Historical Research and Methods
▪ HIST 4990 Senior Seminar

Biography

Dr. Nathan S. Rives specializes in American religious history, with particular interests in the period of the early American republic. His completed book manuscript is titled “Subject to the Law of God: Religious Controversy and Civic Life in New England, 1776-1850.” 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. His book shows how questions of religious liberty were shaped by public debates about the moral implications of religious truth and error.

He has recently begun a project that examines networks of bible societies that formed across the Atlantic world in the early 19th century, and stood at the intersection of emerging networks of modern religious thought, transportation, and finance. His project situates bible societies, often thought to be a quintessentially American development, instead within a transatlantic web centered on London. He plans to extend his research to Britain and continental Europe, especially Germany.

He has presented his research at regional and national conferences, including the American Historical Association (AHA), the Organization of American Historians (OAH), the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR), and the American Society of Church History (ASCH).

Dr. Rives joined the history department at Weber State University as an adjunct instructor in 2011 and became a full-time instructor in 2018.

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 (2022).
▪ 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 & 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).