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 9
... opinions and ethnic affiliations garnered no comparable protections . 10 There is a third reason to focus on the development of religious plural- ism . The success that early Americans had at maintaining civil peace and encouraging ...
... opinions and ethnic affiliations garnered no comparable protections . 10 There is a third reason to focus on the development of religious plural- ism . The success that early Americans had at maintaining civil peace and encouraging ...
Page 11
... opinion . Part of the explanation lies in the fact that neither Native Americans nor African Americans confronted Europeans with the confident , carefully structured networks of belief that Protestants would have associated with ...
... opinion . Part of the explanation lies in the fact that neither Native Americans nor African Americans confronted Europeans with the confident , carefully structured networks of belief that Protestants would have associated with ...
Page 13
... opinions may have sometimes been ridiculed and their instructions often ignored , most of them were dependent upon their parishioners for their positions . These self- described shepherds could not stray too far from their flock's ...
... opinions may have sometimes been ridiculed and their instructions often ignored , most of them were dependent upon their parishioners for their positions . These self- described shepherds could not stray too far from their flock's ...
Page 14
... opinions on the subject of religious differ- ences, I hope that they have at least recovered the major questions that these issues presented, as well as the general tenor of debate and the core of as- sumptions that would be employed in ...
... opinions on the subject of religious differ- ences, I hope that they have at least recovered the major questions that these issues presented, as well as the general tenor of debate and the core of as- sumptions that would be employed in ...
Page 17
... opinion of historian Perez Zagorin , the heretics would have established their own faiths and imposed their own forms of intolerance had they been in charge . 5 At the start of the sixteenth century, one dissident movement THE PLAGUE OF ...
... opinion of historian Perez Zagorin , the heretics would have established their own faiths and imposed their own forms of intolerance had they been in charge . 5 At the start of the sixteenth century, one dissident movement THE PLAGUE OF ...
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