Religious Pluralism in America: The Contentious History of a Founding Ideal

William R. Hutchison '51, a professor at Harvard's Divinity School, is the author of Religious Pluralism in America: The Contentious History of a Founding Ideal, an "ambitious reappraisal of American religious history." In the book, Hutchison chronicles the historical developments that have gradually led Americans to go beyond mere tolerance of religious differences to the actual acceptance of religious diversity. An illumniating volume, scholarly but written with a clarity that makes it readily accessible to the general reader, it welcomes the "new pluralism" as a work in progress towards fulfillment of one of the nation's founding ideals.

Reviews

"Hutchison, the leading historian of religion in America today, has written a very informative book on religious pluralism in America from Colonial days to the present... Hutchison brilliantly documents the vast experience of religion in the United States in order to demonstrate the existence of diversity, tolerance, and experimentation in religion, though he does admit that prejudice, persecution, and peer pressure are an ongoing part of this history as well." -Library Journal