Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans - Hardcover

Moore, R. Laurence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195036638 ISBN 13: 9780195036633

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1986

Synopsis

In light of the curious compulsion to stress Protestant dominance in America's past, this book takes an unorthodox look at religious history in America. Rather than focusing on the usual "mainline" Protestant churches--Episcopal, Congregationalist, Methodist, Baptist, and Lutheran--Moore instead turns his attention to the equally important "outsiders" in the American religious experience and tests the realities of American religious pluralism against their history in Aamerica. Moore shows that, in spite of American ideals espousing religious tolerance, our nation has been surprisingly reluctant to accept the reality of religious pluralism and has viewed these outside groups with suspicion if not hostility. The book contains separate but interrelated chapters on seven influential groups of outsiders--the Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Christian Scientists, Millennialists, 20th-century Protestant Fundamentalists, and the black churches--and their contributions to American religion and society. Through these groups, Moore shows that what was going on in mainline churches may not have been the "normal" religious experience at all, and that many of these "outside" groups embodied values that were, in fact, quintessentially American. Moore finally suggests that America's religious system was in many ways designed to create cracks within the denominations and even to fuel antagonisms, and that people turned to the new religions for a sense of identity or to ease antagonisms and feelings of frustration.

About this title

About the Author

R. Laurence Moore is at Cornell University.

Review

"Relentlessly honest in his sympathetic examination of group after group."--The New York Times Book Review

"[A] very important and provocative book."--Religious Studies Review

"[Moore's] knowledge is...enyclopedic and insight recurrently arresting."--Times Higher Education Supplement

"This group of essays is perhaps the most...instructive new interpretation to appear in the field of American religious history in a decade."--American Quarterly

"This well-written, well-argued book raises important questions to sort out our confusion of tongues. It is in the best sense provocative."--The Catholic Historical Review

"Should be required reading for American students of new religions. It challenges several premises widely accepted by sociologists working in this area."--Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

"[A] provocative book....Heightens our appreciation of the ingenuity and organizational genius of such founders as Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy and Charles T. Russell....Its telegraphic and tantalizing style will surely spark innumerable and fevered discussions on the connection between pluralism and religious originality and deviance."--Cithara

"[A] scholarly and insightful volume."--CHOICE

"A stimulating and complex work....Inimitably provocative in its candor, its freshness, and its foundation on the best of contemporary scholarship."--Church History

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0195036638
• ISBN 13: 9780195036633
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272