Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans

R. Laurence Moore

Examining seven influential groups of religious "outsiders"--Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Christian Scientists, Millennilasts, 20th-century Protestant Fundamentalists, and African-American churches-- this book finds that, despite the American ideal of religious tolerance, our nation has long shown suspicion and hostility to many of these groups even though they embody quintessentially American values.

Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans

R. Laurence Moore

Description

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 mainstream 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 America. Through separate but interrelated chapters on seven influential groups of "outsiders"--the Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Christian Scientists, Millennialists, 20th-century Protestant Fundamentalists, and the African-American churches--Moore shows that what was going on in mainstream 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.

Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans

R. Laurence Moore

Reviews and Awards

"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