From the nineteenth century onwards, Americans have naturalized their colonial origins into a con... more From the nineteenth century onwards, Americans have naturalized their colonial origins into a consensual nationalist history, emphasizing America’s perceived role as a refuge for the persecuted, while smoothing out a myriad of complexities in the process. Evan Haefeli attempts to overturn the assumptions underpinning this narrative and is convinced that many important aspects of early America need to be understood within a broader European context. In Accidental Pluralism, he argues that the collapse of religious unity in England lies at the root of the emergence of pluralism in colonial America, in which he includes Canada and the Caribbean. Relationships among states, churches, and publics were contested from the earliest decades of colonization and created a pluralistic religious landscape that no one had anticipated. The four reviewers are fulsome in their praise, calling it an impressive, important, powerful, and sweeping book that few scholars could have written. The reviewers...
The Third Disestablishment: Church, State, and American Culture, 1940–1975 examines the formative... more The Third Disestablishment: Church, State, and American Culture, 1940–1975 examines the formative period in the development of modern church–state law. It discusses the cultural background for the Supreme Court’s adoption of separation of church and state as the controlling constitutional construct and then the popular response to that adoption. This cultural backdrop included a period of heightened tensions between institutional Protestantism and Catholicism, a conflict that did not dissipate until after the election of John F. Kennedy and the reforms of Vatican II. The book then considers the decline of church–state separation as a legal principle and a cultural value, a process that began in the 1960s with the rise of social welfare legislation under the Great Society.
Robert Wiebe was best known for his 1 967 book, The Searchfor Order, 1877-1920, which traced the ... more Robert Wiebe was best known for his 1 967 book, The Searchfor Order, 1877-1920, which traced the transformation ofAmerican society from a land of culturally isolated "island communities" to an interdependent, bureaucratized society. Through his elegantly metaphorical prose, Wiebe transported readers to a time when Americans were neither able to control nor fully justify the institutions they had created. Wiebe's next book, The Segmented Society: An Introduction to the Meaning ofAmerica (1975), did not receive anywhere near the same attention. Nonetheless, it established the framework that guided his later work. "What held Americans together," Wiebe contended, "was their ability to live apart." An abundant supply of land, coupled with a willingness to move, made it easy for nineteenth-century Americans to keep their distance. If The Search for Order marked the fall of a vibrant "white man's democracy," his fourth book. The Opening ofAme...
The legal changes that brought religious liberty to the United States have been thoroughly docume... more The legal changes that brought religious liberty to the United States have been thoroughly documented. But no one has explained how 18th-century Americans managed to accommodate the religious differences that had produced so much bloodshed in the past. Drawing on pamphlets and broadsides, newspaper exchanges, document collections, personal diaries, church records, and legislative journals, Chris Beneke shows how early Americans learned to live amid a great diversity of beliefs and modes of worship. He briefly summarizes the long history of persecution in Europe and America, and then examines the factors that contributed to the cultural revolution that took place in the realm of ideas and public norms in America. Beneke is the first to offer a systematic explanation of how a people who still cared deeply about the fate of their immortal souls could manage to live with those who held significantly different beliefs about God and the church - in other words, how Americans learned to li...
"From Jamestown to Jefferson" sheds new light on the contexts surrounding Thomas Jeffer... more "From Jamestown to Jefferson" sheds new light on the contexts surrounding Thomas Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom and on the emergence of the American understanding of religious freedom by examining its deep roots in colonial Virginia's remarkable religious diversity. Challenging traditional assumptions about life in early Virginia, the essays in this volume show that the colony was more religious, more diverse, and more tolerant than commonly supposed. The presence of groups as disparate as Quakers, African and African American slaves, and Presbyterians, alongside the established Anglicans, generated a dynamic tension between religious diversity and attempts at hegemonic authority that was apparent from Virginia's earliest days. The contributors, all renowned scholars of Virginia history, treat in detail the complex interactions among Virginia's varied religious groups, both in and out of power, as well as the seismic changes unleashed by the Statute's adoption in 1786. "From Jamestown to Jefferson" suggests that the daily religious practices and struggles that took place in the town halls, backwoods settlements, plantation houses, and slave quarters that dotted the colonial Virginia landscape helped create a social and political space within which a new understanding of religious freedom, represented by Jefferson's Statute, could emerge. "Contributors" Edward L. Bond, Alabama A&M University * Richard E. Bond, Virginia Wesleyan College * Thomas E. Buckley, Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University/Graduate Theological Union * Daniel L. Dreisbach, American University, School of Public Affairs * Philip D. Morgan, Johns Hopkins University * Monica Najar, Lehigh University * Paul Rasor, Virginia Wesleyan College * Brent Tarter, Library of Virginia"
Abstract: From the colonial period to the present, no form of integration (defined as the opening... more Abstract: From the colonial period to the present, no form of integration (defined as the opening of institutions and communal spaces to members of different groups) has produced more conflict than the integration of American schools. Struggles to open other locations ...
From the nineteenth century onwards, Americans have naturalized their colonial origins into a con... more From the nineteenth century onwards, Americans have naturalized their colonial origins into a consensual nationalist history, emphasizing America’s perceived role as a refuge for the persecuted, while smoothing out a myriad of complexities in the process. Evan Haefeli attempts to overturn the assumptions underpinning this narrative and is convinced that many important aspects of early America need to be understood within a broader European context. In Accidental Pluralism, he argues that the collapse of religious unity in England lies at the root of the emergence of pluralism in colonial America, in which he includes Canada and the Caribbean. Relationships among states, churches, and publics were contested from the earliest decades of colonization and created a pluralistic religious landscape that no one had anticipated. The four reviewers are fulsome in their praise, calling it an impressive, important, powerful, and sweeping book that few scholars could have written. The reviewers...
The Third Disestablishment: Church, State, and American Culture, 1940–1975 examines the formative... more The Third Disestablishment: Church, State, and American Culture, 1940–1975 examines the formative period in the development of modern church–state law. It discusses the cultural background for the Supreme Court’s adoption of separation of church and state as the controlling constitutional construct and then the popular response to that adoption. This cultural backdrop included a period of heightened tensions between institutional Protestantism and Catholicism, a conflict that did not dissipate until after the election of John F. Kennedy and the reforms of Vatican II. The book then considers the decline of church–state separation as a legal principle and a cultural value, a process that began in the 1960s with the rise of social welfare legislation under the Great Society.
Robert Wiebe was best known for his 1 967 book, The Searchfor Order, 1877-1920, which traced the ... more Robert Wiebe was best known for his 1 967 book, The Searchfor Order, 1877-1920, which traced the transformation ofAmerican society from a land of culturally isolated "island communities" to an interdependent, bureaucratized society. Through his elegantly metaphorical prose, Wiebe transported readers to a time when Americans were neither able to control nor fully justify the institutions they had created. Wiebe's next book, The Segmented Society: An Introduction to the Meaning ofAmerica (1975), did not receive anywhere near the same attention. Nonetheless, it established the framework that guided his later work. "What held Americans together," Wiebe contended, "was their ability to live apart." An abundant supply of land, coupled with a willingness to move, made it easy for nineteenth-century Americans to keep their distance. If The Search for Order marked the fall of a vibrant "white man's democracy," his fourth book. The Opening ofAme...
The legal changes that brought religious liberty to the United States have been thoroughly docume... more The legal changes that brought religious liberty to the United States have been thoroughly documented. But no one has explained how 18th-century Americans managed to accommodate the religious differences that had produced so much bloodshed in the past. Drawing on pamphlets and broadsides, newspaper exchanges, document collections, personal diaries, church records, and legislative journals, Chris Beneke shows how early Americans learned to live amid a great diversity of beliefs and modes of worship. He briefly summarizes the long history of persecution in Europe and America, and then examines the factors that contributed to the cultural revolution that took place in the realm of ideas and public norms in America. Beneke is the first to offer a systematic explanation of how a people who still cared deeply about the fate of their immortal souls could manage to live with those who held significantly different beliefs about God and the church - in other words, how Americans learned to li...
"From Jamestown to Jefferson" sheds new light on the contexts surrounding Thomas Jeffer... more "From Jamestown to Jefferson" sheds new light on the contexts surrounding Thomas Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom and on the emergence of the American understanding of religious freedom by examining its deep roots in colonial Virginia's remarkable religious diversity. Challenging traditional assumptions about life in early Virginia, the essays in this volume show that the colony was more religious, more diverse, and more tolerant than commonly supposed. The presence of groups as disparate as Quakers, African and African American slaves, and Presbyterians, alongside the established Anglicans, generated a dynamic tension between religious diversity and attempts at hegemonic authority that was apparent from Virginia's earliest days. The contributors, all renowned scholars of Virginia history, treat in detail the complex interactions among Virginia's varied religious groups, both in and out of power, as well as the seismic changes unleashed by the Statute's adoption in 1786. "From Jamestown to Jefferson" suggests that the daily religious practices and struggles that took place in the town halls, backwoods settlements, plantation houses, and slave quarters that dotted the colonial Virginia landscape helped create a social and political space within which a new understanding of religious freedom, represented by Jefferson's Statute, could emerge. "Contributors" Edward L. Bond, Alabama A&M University * Richard E. Bond, Virginia Wesleyan College * Thomas E. Buckley, Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University/Graduate Theological Union * Daniel L. Dreisbach, American University, School of Public Affairs * Philip D. Morgan, Johns Hopkins University * Monica Najar, Lehigh University * Paul Rasor, Virginia Wesleyan College * Brent Tarter, Library of Virginia"
Abstract: From the colonial period to the present, no form of integration (defined as the opening... more Abstract: From the colonial period to the present, no form of integration (defined as the opening of institutions and communal spaces to members of different groups) has produced more conflict than the integration of American schools. Struggles to open other locations ...
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