Beyond Toleration : The Religious Origins of American Pluralism: The Religious Origins of American PluralismAt its founding, the United States was one of the most religiously diverse places in the world. Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Quakers, Dutch Reformed, German Reformed, Lutherans, Huguenots, Dunkers, Jews, Moravians, and Mennonites populated the nations towns and villages. Dozens of new denominations would emerge over the succeeding years. What allowed people of so many different faiths to forge a nation together? In this richly told story of ideas, Chris Beneke demonstrates how the United States managed to overcome the religious violence and bigotry that characterized much of early modern Europe and America. The key, Beneke argues, did not lie solely in the protection of religious freedom. Instead, he reveals how American culture was transformed to accommodate the religious differences within it. The expansion of individual rights, the mixing of believers and churches in the same institutions, and the introduction of more civility into public life all played an instrumental role in creating the religious pluralism for which the United States has become renowned. These changes also established important precedents for future civil rights movements in which dignity, as much as equality, would be at stake. Beyond Toleration is the first book to offer a systematic explanation of how early Americans learned to live with differences in matters of the highest importance to them --and how they found a way to articulate these differences civilly. Today when religious conflicts once again pose a grave danger to democratic experiments across the globe, Beneke's book serves as a timely reminder of how one country moved past toleration and towards religious pluralism. |
From inside the book
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Page 10
... authority, stood on increasingly tenuous ground. Just as they removed the legal barriers that prevented them from practicing their religion freely and speaking their views openly, early Americans in- creasingly deferred to the ...
... authority, stood on increasingly tenuous ground. Just as they removed the legal barriers that prevented them from practicing their religion freely and speaking their views openly, early Americans in- creasingly deferred to the ...
Page 11
... authority of Native American sha- mans and belief in the efficacy of customary spiritual remedies were deeply shaken by the devastation wrought by European - borne diseases . African faiths fared still worse — as religious systems ...
... authority of Native American sha- mans and belief in the efficacy of customary spiritual remedies were deeply shaken by the devastation wrought by European - borne diseases . African faiths fared still worse — as religious systems ...
Page 16
... authorities, however, saw no alternative. Quakers had been coming together for unauthorized religious gatherings, publishing tracts favorable to their sect, and proselytizing among the Congregational laity. Every one of these actions ...
... authorities, however, saw no alternative. Quakers had been coming together for unauthorized religious gatherings, publishing tracts favorable to their sect, and proselytizing among the Congregational laity. Every one of these actions ...
Page 17
... authorities on both sides of the Atlantic possessed a perfectly good reason to suppress religious dissent : they knew they were right and the dissenters wrong . They operated under the reasonable premise that there could only be one ...
... authorities on both sides of the Atlantic possessed a perfectly good reason to suppress religious dissent : they knew they were right and the dissenters wrong . They operated under the reasonable premise that there could only be one ...
Page 19
... authorities had (as was the custom of the day) suppressed heretics so ''that they might not infect the Church, or injure the publick Peace,'' Callendar went on to assert that God had readied an ''Asy- lum'' for Massachusetts' exiles to ...
... authorities had (as was the custom of the day) suppressed heretics so ''that they might not infect the Church, or injure the publick Peace,'' Callendar went on to assert that God had readied an ''Asy- lum'' for Massachusetts' exiles to ...
Contents
3 | |
15 | |
Americas First Great Awakening | 49 |
The Ordeal of Religious Integration | 79 |
The Rise of Religious Liberty | 113 |
Religious Pluralism in the Founding of the Republic | 157 |
Mingle with Us as Americans Religious Pluralism after the Founding | 203 |
Notes | 227 |
Index | 295 |
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Common terms and phrases
African Americans Anglican anti-Catholicism appeared authority Awakening Backus Baptists beliefs bishop Boston Cambridge Carroll Catholicism century Chandler Chapel Hill Charles Charles Chauncy Chauncy Christian Church of England civil clergymen College colonial America common Congregational Congregationalists Constitution contemporary controversy culture debate decades denominations discourse dissent doctrines Early American ecumenical eighteenth eighteenth-century Americans Episcopal evangelical faith Franklin George Whitefield Gilbert Tennent groups Hannah Adams Harvard University Press History institutions interdenominational Isaac Backus itinerant James John Jonathan late eighteenth-century liberal liberty of conscience Light Presbyterians Livingston Madison Massachusetts midcentury ministers Mormons Native Americans North Carolina Press noted opinions opponents Oxford University Press Pennsylvania persecution Philadelphia political preaching Presbyterians principles private judgment Protestant Quakers religion religious differences religious diversity religious liberty religious pluralism revivals Revolutionary rhetoric right of private Samuel Sandemanians sects sermon Smith Society Stiles Synod Tennent theological Thomas toleration traditional Virginia Gazette vols Whitefield William worship wrote York