Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans [Paperback]

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--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 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 embodied values that were, in fact, quintessentially American.

Relentlessly honest in his sympathetic examination of group after group. --The New York Times Book Review

[A] very important and provocative book. --Religious Studies Review

[Moore's] knowledge is...enyclopedic and insight recurrently arresting. --Times Higher Education Supplement

This group of essays is perhaps the most...instructive new interpretation to appear in the field of American religious history in a decade. --American Quarterly

This well-written, well-argued book raises important questions to sort out our confusion of tongues. It is in the best sense provocative. --The Catholic Historical Review

Should be required reading for American students of new religions. It challenges several premises widely accepted by sociologists working in this area. --Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

[A] provocative book....Heightens our appreciation of the ingenuity and organizational genius of such founders as Joseph SlCD