Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans

By R. Laurence Moore

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195036638
• ISBN13: 9780195036633
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.6" x 1.0" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

The Myth of Religious Consensus

This is an important and excellent book, not only for achieving its objectives, but also for providing an intellectual reference point for divining "whither goest" the beneficial integration of Islam in America.Professor Moore's "single minded intent," i.e. to acknowledge the contributions of historically marginalized religious groups to considerable success of the American system, was accomplished with this magisterial collection of his rigorous thinking on this subject. He plums the experience of a variety of outsiders ranging from Mormons to Fundamentalists to Black Muslims, and beyond.Instead of concentrating, as did many religious historians (or apologists) before him, on the "political uselessness" or "pernicious dissent" of non-mainline denominations, Moore acknowledges and presses home the observation that "religious struggles engage people in elaborate strategies that on each side entail affirmation and denial, advancement and repression, of a set of cultural options."Though published nearly twenty years ago, this elaborately documented, highly readable, and concise piece of scholarship should ground American, cultural centrists in an elegant, reasonable approach in understanding what may (and, better, may not) be required to facilitate a rightful place in America for Islamics.