Lively Experiment

Chris Beneke is associate professor of history at Bentley University.Christopher S. Grenda is associate professor of history at Bronx Community College of CUNY.

The line from religious intolerance to religious tolerance to pluralism was not straight and uncomplicated. This outstanding anthology, born out of a conference celebrating the 350th anniversary of Rhode Island’s 1663 charter, provides a plethora of case studies from the Colonial era (with especially good analyses of Roger Williams, William Penn, and the Methodist relationship to slavery in the Caribbean) and the 19th century. Contributors also provide contemporary stories of ‘Mormon moments,’ the movement against ‘cults’ in the 1970s, and the liberal effort to push the religious right off the air using the Fairness Doctrine as a weapon. What is clear throughout is how much toleration has been hard for people to tolerate. ‘What people do with their religious liberty can seem downright appalling to others,’ the editors note, and the essays are full of such examples. The Rhode Island context results in multiple discussions of the complexities of Roger Williams, whose emphasis on both liberty and proselytization helps explain the ‘American polity’s unique and somewhat paradoxical combination of religious disestablishment and a religiously charged public sphere.’ Top-notch scholarship on a topic of great contemporary importance. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

• Introduction, Chris Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda Part One. Roger Williams and the Seventeenth-Century’s Lively ExperimentsChapter 1. “How Special was Rhode Island? The Global Context of the 1663 Charter” Evan HaefeliChapter 2. “’Livelie Experiment’ and ‘Holy Experiment’: Two Trajectories of Religious Liberty” Andrew R. MurphyChapter 3. “Toleration and Tolerance in Early Modern England” Scott SowerbyChapter 4. “‘When the Word of The Lord Runs Freely’: Roger Williams and Evangelical Toleration” Teresa BejanPart Two. Toleration, Revival, and Enlightenment in the Long Eighteenth CenturyChapter 5. “Muslims, Toleration, and Civil Rights, from Roger Williams to Thomas Jefferson” Denise SpellbergChapter 6. “‘An encroachment on our religious rights’: Methodist Missions, Slavery, and Religious Toleration in the British Atlantic World” Christopher C. Jones Chapter 7. “Between God and our own Souls: The Discussion over Toleration in Eighteenth-Century America” Keith PachollPart Three. Divisions Within: Protestants and Catholics in the New NationChapter 8. “‘Enlightened, Tolerant, and Liberal’: Catholic Influences on Religious Liberty in the New Republic.” Nicholas PellegrinoChapter 9. “Contentious Unity and Tolerant Schisms: Partisanship and ‘Internal’ Toleration in Early National Charleston and New York” Susanna LinsleyChapter 10. “The Nineteenth-Century ‘School Question’: An Episode in Religious Intolerance or an Expansion of Religious Freedom?” Steven GreenPart Four. Pluralism and Its Discontents: Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Contests Over Religious DifferenceChapter 11. “There is no such thing as a reverend of no church”: Incarcerated Children, Nonsectarian Religion, and Freedom of Worship in Gilded Age New York City” Jacob BetzChapter 12. “The Cost of Inclusion: Interfaith Unity and Intra-Faith Division in the Formation of Protestant-Catholic-Jewish America” David MislinChapter 13. “Dog Tags: Religious Toleration and the Politics of American Military Identification” Ronit StahlPart Five. Ecumenism’s Paradoxes: Religious Dissent and the Redefinition of the Modern Religious MainstreamChapter 14. “‘This Is a Mighty Warfare that We Are Engaged In:’ Pentecostals in Early Twentieth-Century New England” Evelyn SterneChapter 15. “How the Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses Changed American Law and Religion” Shawn Francis PetersChapter 16. “The First Mormon Moment: The Latter-Day Saints in American Culture 1940-65” Christine Hutchison-JonesChapter 17. “Fundamentalists Under Fire: Carl McIntire, Billy James Hargis, and State Censorship of Religious Broadcasting” Paul MatzkoPart Six. Civil or Religious?: The New Boundaries of Religious ToleranceChapter 18. “Neither Spiritual nor Religious: The Anti-Cult Movement, Intolerance, and the Invention of Non-religious Religions” James BennettChapter 19. “America Beyond Civil Religion: The Anabaptist Experience” Kip Wedel