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 8
... Charles Town ( now Charleston ) —hosted a broad array of religious groups . Reporting to London officials on the eve of the American Revolution , Charles Woodmason noted that the capital of South Carolina was home to two Anglican ...
... Charles Town ( now Charleston ) —hosted a broad array of religious groups . Reporting to London officials on the eve of the American Revolution , Charles Woodmason noted that the capital of South Carolina was home to two Anglican ...
Page 9
... the very fact that it needed to be given at all is testimony to the momentous change that had occurred . Eighteenth - century Americans extended what the philosopher Charles Taylor terms ''a presumption of INTRODUCTION 9.
... the very fact that it needed to be given at all is testimony to the momentous change that had occurred . Eighteenth - century Americans extended what the philosopher Charles Taylor terms ''a presumption of INTRODUCTION 9.
Page 10
... Charles Taylor terms ''a presumption of equal worth'' to a wide range of beliefs and institutions.11 Developments of this nature should probably not faze us. A casual ob- server of our own culture could tell you that a diverse society ...
... Charles Taylor terms ''a presumption of equal worth'' to a wide range of beliefs and institutions.11 Developments of this nature should probably not faze us. A casual ob- server of our own culture could tell you that a diverse society ...
Page 16
... Charles II, brought a rapid end to the execu- tions. Thirty years later, the British government would force the Puritan Commonwealth to accept a policy of toleration. Yet in its zealous persecution of the Quakers, the Bay colony had ...
... Charles II, brought a rapid end to the execu- tions. Thirty years later, the British government would force the Puritan Commonwealth to accept a policy of toleration. Yet in its zealous persecution of the Quakers, the Bay colony had ...
Page 21
... Charles River nor along the shores of Connecticut. Because of a series of equally unlikely historical accidents, the European dissenters who made their homes between Rhode Island and Maryland enjoyed unprecedented freedom from church ...
... Charles River nor along the shores of Connecticut. Because of a series of equally unlikely historical accidents, the European dissenters who made their homes between Rhode Island and Maryland enjoyed unprecedented freedom from church ...
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