Description
Book SynopsisDuring the mid-seventeenth century, Anglo-American Protestants described Native American ceremonies as savage devilry, Islamic teaching as violent chicanery, and Catholicism as repugnant superstition. By the mid-eighteenth century, they would describe amicable debates between evangelical missionaries and Algonquian religious leaders about the moral appeal of Christianity, recount learned conversations between English merchants and Muslim scholars, and tell of encounters with hospitable and sincere priests in Catholic Canada and Europe. What explains this poignant shift?Using a variety of sources--travel narratives, dictionaries and encyclopaedias of the world''s religions, missionary tracts, and sermons, The Opening of the Protestant Mind traces a transformation in how English and colonial American Protestants described other religions during a crucial period of English colonization of North America. After the English Revolution of 1688 and the subsequent growth of the British empire,
Trade ReviewThe Opening of the Protestant Mind provides a new origin story for the idea of freedom of conscience, demonstrating its intertwined roots in eighteenth-century political and religious concerns. Eschewing portrayals of puritans as pillars of intolerance, Valeri takes readers deep inside the minds of English Protestants during the colonial conquests that created the British Empire, introduced the comparative study of religion, and paved the way for missionary movements and argues that the imperialism of the nineteenth century was far from inevitable. * Ann Braude, author of Sisters and Saints: Women and American Religion *
A deeply thoughtful, subtly multifaceted, and cogently argued intervention in ongoing discussions regarding Euro-American views of other peoples and religious traditions. * Arun W. Jones, Dan and Lillian Hankey Associate Professor of World Evangelism, Candler School of Theology, Emory University *
This is a compelling account of how, between the Restoration and the American Revolution, Anglo-Protestants learned—at least sometimes—to tolerate non-Protestant people of faith and imagine them as trustworthy imperial subjects or republican citizens. Valeri's moderate Protestants did not embrace radical egalitarianism, but neither were they merely masking and enabling colonialism, imperialism, and racism. Under the regime of British religious toleration, Valeri finds a story marked by contingency, contestation, and conceptual transformation. * Christopher Grasso, author of Skepticism and American Faith: From the Revolution to the Civil War *
Historians of religious toleration often tell a simple tale of atavistic bigotry yielding to enlightened, pragmatic secularism. The Opening of the Protestant Mind tells a more complicated story of sincere believers struggling to imagine a social order that accommodated religious difference. Making unexpected connections between domestic debates and imperial efforts to 'convert' non-European peoples, Mark Valeri deepens our appreciation of a now-imperiled legacy built by those who seriously—if imperfectly—embraced moderation as a spiritual value. * Daniel K. Richter, author of Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One: Disorder and Confessionalism Sources for Restoration-era Writers England's Confessional Ideology Confessional Descriptions of the World's Religions Chapter Two: Praying Indians Conversion within English Protestant Communities Missions to Algonquian Communities in New England Chapter Three: Revolution and Toleration Apologists for the Revolution of 1688 Religious Comparison and the Idea of Toleration Travel and Religious Encounters Chapter Four: Empire and Whig Moralism Imperial Agendas Whig Criteria for Religious Authenticity New Studies of the World's Religions Eighteenth-century Travelers Chapter Five: Power, Ceremony, and Roman Catholicism French Whigs and the Critique of Ceremonialism Descriptions of Ceremonial Power Images of the World's Religions Religious Diversity and Roman Catholicism Chapter Six: Indian Conversions The Great Awakening and Moral Freedom Native American Moral Conscience Missionaries' Critique of Anglicization The Moral Appeal of Christianity Disaffiliation and Affiliation Epilogue Hannah Adams and the Revolutionary Nation Conclusion: Limits and Paradoxes Index
