Beyond Toleration : The Religious Origins of American Pluralism

At 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. ## Abstract Drawing on pamphlets and broadsides, newspaper exchanges, document collections, personal diaries, church records, and legislative journals, this book engages the question of how early Americans learned to live amid a great diversity of beliefs and modes of worship. It begins by explaining how the right of private judgment gained the status of an unquestioned assumption, and then recounts how the print trade expanded the meaning of this right, and a series of religious revivals transformed it. Beyond Toleration chronicles the subtle changes in public language and social behavior that occurred as official persecution ceased and social institutions became integrated. It shows how toleration first became law and then became irrelevant as religious establishments crumbled and an ambiguous concept called religious liberty triumphed. It demonstrates how the assumption that dissenting faiths were merely permissible gave way to the conviction that a variety of faiths deserved equal treatment. In the end, Beyond Toleration explains how 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. "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."--Jacket When French sociologist Lo"ic Wacquant signed up at a boxing gym in a black neighborhood of Chicago's South Side, he had never contemplated getting close to a ring, let alone climbing into it. Yet for three years he immersed himself among local fighters, amateur and professional. He learned the Sweet science of bruising, participating in all phases of the pugilist's strenuous preparation, from shadow-boxing drills to sparring to fighting in the Golden Gloves tournament. In this experimental ethnography of incandescent intensity, the scholar-turned-boxer supplies a model for a "carnal sociology" capable of capturing "the taste and ache of action." Body & Soul marries the analytic rigor of the sociologist with the stylistic grace of the novelist to offer a compelling portrait of a bodily craft and of life and labor in the black American ghetto, but also a fascinating tale of personal transformation and social transcendence. Drawing on pamphlets & broadsides, newspaper exchanges, document collections, personal diaries, church records & legislative journals, this book shows how early Americans learned to live amid a great diversity of beliefs & modes of worship. It examines the factors that contributed to the cultural revolution that took place in America