About From New Age to Evangelical: Radical Religion in the American West
Charismatic religious leaders have long sought to realize their visions in the vast expanses of the American West. American evangelicals who flocked to the once-sleepy mountain town of Colorado Springs planted new churches and built religious empires that left their mark on American politics - including 1990s political campaigns in Oregon. New Age spirituality has made tarot cards, astrology, and crystals ubiquitous. "Mother God," the former leader of the Colorado-based Love Has Won movement, and the mysterious channeler "Ramtha," based in Yelm, Washington, built large and devout followings based on their teachings.
Historian Will Schultz and journalist Leah Sottile illuminate how fear, hope, spirituality, and capitalism have been stoked by religious radicals in the American West.
Will Schultz is an assistant professor of American religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the author of Jesus Springs: Evangelical Capitalism and the Fate of an
American City. Schultz is currently researching a book on efforts to
regulate financial fraud within religious communities.
Leah Sottile is a journalist, essayist and the author of When
the Moon Turns to Blood, and Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has One, False
Profits and the Fever Dream of the American New Age, which won the 2026
Oregon Book Award for General Nonfiction. Her longform journalism has been
published widely, from The New York Times Magazine to the BBC, and she
is the host of the OPB podcasts Hush, Bundyville, Burn Wild, and Two
Minutes Past Nine. She is the co-founder of investigative outlet The
Western Edge, and author of the newsletter, The Truth Does Not Change
According to Our Ability to Stomach It.
