The First Prejudice

Leading religious historians connect changes in law and rhetoric to daily cooperation and conflict in early America. These essays examine such topics as Native American spiritual life, the biblical sources of tolerance and intolerance, contemporary philosophies of religious liberty, and the resilience of African American faiths.

In many ways, religion was the United States' first prejudice—both an early source of bigotry and the object of the first sustained efforts to limit its effects. Spanning more than two centuries across colonial British America and the United States, The First Prejudice offers a groundbreaking exploration of the early history of persecution and toleration. The twelve essays in this volume were composed by leading historians with an eye to the larger significance of religious tolerance and intolerance. Individual chapters examine the prosecution of religious crimes, the biblical sources of tolerance and intolerance, the British imperial context of toleration, the bounds of Native American spiritual independence, the nuances of anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism, the resilience of African American faiths, and the challenges confronted by skeptics and freethinkers.

The First Prejudice presents a revealing portrait of the rhetoric, regulations, and customs that shaped the relationships between people of different faiths in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America. It relates changes in law and language to the lived experience of religious conflict and religious cooperation, highlighting the crucial ways in which they molded U.S. culture and politics. By incorporating a broad range of groups and religious differences in its accounts of tolerance and intolerance, The First Prejudice opens a significant new vista on the understanding of America's long experience with diversity.

Introduction
—Chris Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda

PART I. IDEOLOGIES OF TOLERANCE AND INTOLERANCE IN EARLY AMERICA
Chapter 1. Faith, Reason, and Enlightenment: The Cultural Sources of Toleration in Early America
—Christopher S. Grenda
Chapter 2. Amalek and the Rhetoric of Extermination
—John Corrigan

PART II. PRACTICES OF TOLERANCE AND INTOLERANCE IN COLONIAL BRITISH AMERICA
Chapter 3. The Episcopate, the British Union, and the Failure of Religious Settlement in Colonial British America
—Ned Landsman
Chapter 4. Practicing Toleration in Dutch New Netherland
—Joyce D. Goodfriend
Chapter 5. Heretics, Blasphemers, and Sabbath Breakers: The Prosecution of Religious Crime in Early America
—Susan Juster
Chapter 6. Persecuting Quakers? Liberty and Toleration in Early Pennsylvania
—Andrew R. Murphy

PART III. THE BOUNDARIES OF TOLERANCE AND INTOLERANCE IN EARLY AMERICA
Chapter 7. Native Freedom? Indians and Religious Tolerance in Early America
—Richard W. Pointer
Chapter 8. Slaves to Intolerance: African American Christianity and Religious Freedom in Early America
—Jon Sensbach
Chapter 9. Catholics, Protestants, and the Clash of Civilizations in Early America
—Owen Stanwood
Chapter 10. Anti-Semitism, Toleration, and Appreciation: The Changing Relations of Jews and Gentiles in Early America
—William Pencak

PART IV. THE PERSISTENCE OF TOLERANCE AND INTOLERANCE IN THE NEW NATION
Chapter 11. The ''Catholic Spirit Prevailing in Our Country'': America's Moderate Religious Revolution
—Chris Beneke
Chapter 12. The Boundaries of Toleration and Tolerance: Religious Infidelity in the Early American Republic
—Christopher Grasso

Notes
List of Contributors
Index