Study Questions
William R. Hutchison
Religious Pluralism in America
- What is the difference between the terms "diversity"
and "pluralism"? What is the argument that Hutchison makes in this book? How
has the American understanding of pluralism changed over time? How does the
author hope that his book will be understood?
- How did Europeans view the colonial American
religious scene? What is the "Crevecoeur Proposition"? How diverse were the
colonies in reality? Describe the increase in diversity before the Civil
War.
- What was the answer to the question, "What must I do
to be tolerated?" Which groups received "Amused Tolerance," and why? Why was
tolerance not extended to Catholics and Mormons?
- Hutchinson says that America created an informal
religious establishment. What does he mean by this? How was it constructed
and maintained? Define "Protestant ethos," and describe its prominent
elements. What was the movement to officially make the United States a
Christian nation, and why did it fail?
- Describe the range of solutions American Protestants
offered for America's social ills in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Identify Sumner, Carnegie, Alger, Sheldon, Conwell, Gladden, and
Rauschenbusch.
- How did the changes that Social Gospelers champion
provide openings for twentieth-century religious and cultural pluralism?
Identify the World's Parliament of Religions and its significance. How did
liberal Protestantism help change the definition of pluralism from
toleration to inclusion? Describe the importance of Theodore Parker, Charles
Darwin, Reform Judaism, and liberal Catholicism.
- The period between the world wars has been called
"the second disestablishment" of American Protestantism. How did squabbles
between liberal Protestants undermine Protestantism's domination of American
culture? Define "neo-orthodoxy," and identify Bruce Barton, Reinhold
Niebuhr, and Paul Tillich.
- While the Protestant establishment was moving toward
inclusion of other religions, what caused minority groups to resist getting
included? How did the Chicago World's Fair include assumptions about white
Protestant superiority? What kind of "diversity" was implied? What were the
objections of Swami Vivekananda and Theophilus Gould Steward? What idea did
Israel Zwangwill's play The Melting Pot advocate, and how did Franz
Boas's idea of cultural pluralism and Horace Kallen's metaphor of the
orchestra repudiate it?
- What was the martyrdom of the "four chaplains," and
what new development did it symbolize? How did Will Herberg's
Protestant, Catholic, Jew, and works like it, characterize pluralism
after World War II? What evidence was there that the victory of tolerance
was anything but complete? How were Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism
included in the new Air Force Academy chapel, and what limits to pluralism
did it symbolize? How did non-Protestants and blacks like James Baldwin
question inclusiveness?
- What were the objections of conservative and moderate
Protestants to the new pluralism? What were the effects of a resurgent
conservative Protestantism in the 1970s and 1980s? How has it renewed its
attack on pluralism? How both now and and in the future can pluralism and
moral cohesion be balanced, according to the author? Is a sense of national
"chosenness" still possible? What is the possible effect of the increasingly
common option of choosing one's identity?
Last updated:
Thursday, December 02, 2010 07:38 PM