Description: "Evan Haefeli argues that America's professed religious tolerance arose out of necessity, since no standard could prevail on its polyglot immigrants. More important, Haefeli ties the emergence of religious toleration to events worldwide, creating a true transnationalist history that links developing American realities to political and social conflicts and resolutions in Europe, showing the ways in which the codification of relationships among states, churches, and publics was endlessly contested in the colonial era. This is an ambitious attempt to reconcile our understandings of power-secular and otherwise- and refine our narratives about what came to be seen as American values"--
Brief description:
Evan Haefeli is associate professor of history at Texas A&M University.
Review Quotes: "An eye-opening narrative of the many versions of church-and-state attempted or imagined during the great age of British colonization in the Caribbean and North America--a narrative uprooting the assumption that a straight line runs from those attempts to post-1789 schemes to separate church and state. Accidental Pluralism will surprise and probably enchant most students of early American history."-- "David D. Hall, author of A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England"