Religious outsiders and the making of Americans / R. Laurence Moore.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Moore, R. Laurence (Robert Laurence), 1940-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Religious pluralism--United States.

Religious pluralism.

United States.

United States--Religion.

Religion.

Physical Description:

xviii, 243 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1986.

Summary:

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--Mooreinstead 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 embodiedvalues that were, in fact, quintessentially American.

Contents:

Introduction: Protestant Unity and the American Mission

The Historiography of a Desire 3

Part 1 Outsider Religions, Ethnicity, and American Identity

Chapter 1 How To Become a People: The Mormon Scenario 25

Chapter 2 Managing Catholic Success in a Protestant Empire 48

Chapter 3 American Jews as an Ordinary Minority 72

Part 2 The Progressive's Despair

Religions for Average Americans

Chapter 4 Christian Science and American Popular Religion 105

Chapter 5 Premillennial Christian Views of God's Justice and American Injustice 128

Chapter 6 The Protestant Majority as a Lost Generation

A Look at Fundamentalism 150

Chapter 7 Black Culture and Black Churches

The Quest for an Autonomous Identity 173

Postscript: Civil and Uncivil Religions

Describing Religious Pluralism 201.

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

0195036638 :

0195051882

OCLC:

12082484