Religious Pluralism in America: The Contentious History of a Founding Ideal [Hardcover]

Professor William R. Hutchison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0300098138 | ISBN-13: 978-0300098136

Religious toleration is enshrined as an ideal in the Constitution, but religious diversity has had a complicated history in the United States. Although Americans have taken pride in the rich array of religious faiths that help define their nation, for two centuries they have been grappling with the question of how they can coexist. In this ambitious reappraisal of American religious history, William Hutchison chronicles the country's struggle to fulfill the promise of its founding ideals. In 1800 the United States was an overwhelmingly Protestant nation. Over the next two centuries, Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and others would emerge to challenge the Protestant mainstream. Although their demands were often met with resistance, Hutchison demonstrates that as a result of these conflicts the USA expanded its understanding of what it means to be a religiously diverse country. No longer satisfied with mere legal toleration, the USA now expects that all religious groups will share in creating its national agenda.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Many Americans took it as a bizarre joke when in 1980 folk singer Pete Seeger celebrated "old time religion" with the prayers of Zarathustra and Druids. Harvard historian Hutchison sees something more. For him, Seeger's outre hymn was but one more straw in the wind blowing away centuries of Protestant hegemony and blowing in an unpredictable world of religious pluralism. In a chronicle rich in insight, alive with anecdote, Hutchison illuminates the cultural transformations that enabled twentieth-century Americans to embrace belatedly the religious diversity that emerged in the nineteenth-century influx of Catholic and Jewish immigrants and in the rise of new American-born faiths such as Mormonism and Transcendentalism. These transformations have turned a country that once congratulated itself on merely tolerating non-Protestant Christians into a country that guarantees the rights of full participation to a wide range of religions, including those of Buddhist immigrants and New Age devotees. Though he acknowledges the concerns of critics worried about the moral balkanization of a society lacking shared religious premises, Hutchison hails America's new religious pluralism as a great achievement. A balanced and informative narrative. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Rich and engaging... [Hutchison's] description... shows why his reputation as a historian of Protestantism is unsurpassed. -- (Thomas C. Berg, Christian Century

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (April 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300098138
• ISBN-13: 978-0300098136
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,364,512 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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