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 5
... Americans . Nor were they any farther from the exclusivity practiced by most colonial governments in the early eighteenth century than we are from the de jure racial segregation that persisted until the 1960s . Viewed in such a light ...
... Americans . Nor were they any farther from the exclusivity practiced by most colonial governments in the early eighteenth century than we are from the de jure racial segregation that persisted until the 1960s . Viewed in such a light ...
Page 6
... America , the legal revolution did not stop at toleration . As gradually as colonial governments adopted the legal practice of toler- ation , they suddenly abandoned it between the 1760s and the 1780s for something that is usually ...
... America , the legal revolution did not stop at toleration . As gradually as colonial governments adopted the legal practice of toler- ation , they suddenly abandoned it between the 1760s and the 1780s for something that is usually ...
Page 10
... American culture, and remained vibrant into the revolutionary period. Almost everywhere in colonial America, Catholics were denied civil offices, militia service, and voting rights. They were taxed to support Protestant churches and ...
... American culture, and remained vibrant into the revolutionary period. Almost everywhere in colonial America, Catholics were denied civil offices, militia service, and voting rights. They were taxed to support Protestant churches and ...
Page 11
... colonial American slavery . By the late eighteenth - century , Native American faiths survived mostly in fragments , while West African faiths persisted only in 12 upstart evangelical churches , such as the Separate Baptists and. traces ...
... colonial American slavery . By the late eighteenth - century , Native American faiths survived mostly in fragments , while West African faiths persisted only in 12 upstart evangelical churches , such as the Separate Baptists and. traces ...
Page 12
... colonial America for the previous century and a half , the change is stunning . Until the beginning of the eigh- teenth century , religious differences had always been treated with disdain if not violence . But by the end of the ...
... colonial America for the previous century and a half , the change is stunning . Until the beginning of the eigh- teenth century , religious differences had always been treated with disdain if not violence . But by the end of the ...
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