Accidental Pluralism

"Evan Haefeli argues that America's professed religious tolerance arose out of necessity, since no standard could prevail on its polyglot immigrants. More important, Haefeli ties the emergence of religious toleration to events worldwide, creating a true transnationalist history that links developing American realities to political and social conflicts and resolutions in Europe, showing the ways in which the codification of relationships among states, churches, and publics was endlessly contested in the colonial era. This is an ambitious attempt to reconcile our understandings of power-secular and otherwise- and refine our narratives about what came to be seen as American values"--