Three hundred and fifty years ago, Roger Williams launched one of the world’s first great experiments in religious toleration. Insisting that religion be separated from civil power, he founded Rhode Island, a colony that welcomed people of many faiths. Though stark forms of intolerance persisted, Williams’ commitments to faith and liberty of conscience came to define the nation and its conception of itself. Through crisp essays that show how Americans demolished old prejudices while inventing new ones, The Lively Experiment offers a comprehensive account of America’s boisterous history of interreligious relations.

Table of Contents:
Introduction, Chris Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda Part One. Roger Williams and the Seventeenth-Century’s Lively Experiments Chapter 1. “How Special was Rhode Island? The Global Context of the 1663 Charter” Evan Haefeli Chapter 2. “’Livelie Experiment’ and ‘Holy Experiment’: Two Trajectories of Religious Liberty” Andrew R. Murphy Chapter 3. “Toleration and Tolerance in Early Modern England” Scott Sowerby Chapter 4. “‘When the Word of The Lord Runs Freely’: Roger Williams and Evangelical Toleration” Teresa Bejan Part Two. Toleration, Revival, and Enlightenment in the Long Eighteenth Century Chapter 5. “Muslims, Toleration, and Civil Rights, from Roger Williams to Thomas Jefferson” Denise Spellberg Chapter 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 Pacholl Part Three. Divisions Within: Protestants and Catholics in the New Nation Chapter 8. “‘Enlightened, Tolerant, and Liberal’: Catholic Influences on Religious Liberty in the New Republic.” Nicholas Pellegrino Chapter 9. “Contentious Unity and Tolerant Schisms: Partisanship and ‘Internal’ Toleration in Early National Charleston and New York” Susanna Linsley Chapter 10. “The Nineteenth-Century ‘School Question’: An Episode in Religious Intolerance or an Expansion of Religious Freedom?” Steven Green Part Four. Pluralism and Its Discontents: Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Contests Over Religious Difference Chapter 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 Betz Chapter 12. “The Cost of Inclusion: Interfaith Unity and Intra-Faith Division in the Formation of Protestant-Catholic-Jewish America” David Mislin Chapter 13. “Dog Tags: Religious Toleration and the Politics of American Military Identification” Ronit Stahl Part Five. Ecumenism’s Paradoxes: Religious Dissent and the Redefinition of the Modern Religious Mainstream Chapter 14. “‘This Is a Mighty Warfare that We Are Engaged In:’ Pentecostals in Early Twentieth-Century New England” Evelyn Sterne Chapter 15. “How the Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses Changed American Law and Religion” Shawn Francis Peters Chapter 16. “The First Mormon Moment: The Latter-Day Saints in American Culture 1940-65” Christine Hutchison-Jones Chapter 17. “Fundamentalists Under Fire: Carl McIntire, Billy James Hargis, and State Censorship of Religious Broadcasting” Paul Matzko Part Six. Civil or Religious?: The New Boundaries of Religious Tolerance Chapter 18. “Neither Spiritual nor Religious: The Anti-Cult Movement, Intolerance, and the Invention of Non-religious Religions” James Bennett Chapter 19. “America Beyond Civil Religion: The Anabaptist Experience” Kip Wedel