Overview

As the news shows us every day, contemporary American culture and politics are rife with people who demonize their enemies by projecting their own failings and flaws onto them. But this is no recent development. Rather, as John Corrigan argues here, it’s an expression of a trauma endemic to America’s history, particularly involving our long domestic record of religious conflict and violence. Religious Intolerance, America, and the World spans from Christian colonists’ intolerance of Native Americans and the role of religion in the new republic’s foreign-policy crises to Cold War witch hunts and the persecution complexes that entangle Christians and Muslims today. Corrigan reveals how US churches and institutions have continuously campaigned against intolerance overseas even as they’ve abetted or performed it at home. This selective condemnation of intolerance, he shows, created a legacy of foreign policy interventions promoting religious freedom and human rights that was not reflected within America’s own borders. This timely, captivating book forces America to confront its claims of exceptionalism based on religious liberty—and perhaps begin to break the grotesque cycle of projection and oppression.

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9780226313931

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Reviews

With this erudite, intelligent, provocative, and important book, Corrigan has made a major contribution to religious history, the political analysis of religious freedom, and the history of international affairs. --Melani McAlister, George Washington University Religious Intolerance, America, and the World is a magisterial work. It is a beautifully written and persuasively--even relentlessly--argued book, with a sweeping historical arc that begins in the colonial period and ends with the current presidency of Donald Trump. Through incisive analysis of an absolutely stunning array of primary sources, Corrigan marshals a mountain of persuasive evidence. His bookis a major and much-needed contribution to our current historical moment. --Heather Curtis, Tufts University

Corrigan covers a broad span of history with erudite, masterfully crafted chapters on early America, the antebellum period, the later nineteenth century, the Cold War, and the twenty-first century. Each chapter presents a rich world of intra-Protestant debates about the meaning of violence and persecution at home and abroad. -- American Religion This timely, captivating book forces America to confront its claims of exceptionalism based on religious liberty--and perhaps begin to break the grotesque cycle of projection and oppression. -- Reading Religion 'This provocative account should gain significant attention among scholars who continue to try and explain the complex history of religious intolerance in America. -- New England Quarterly With this erudite, intelligent, provocative, and important book, Corrigan has made a major contribution to religious history, the political analysis of religious freedom, and the history of international affairs. -- Melani McAlister, George Washington University John Corrigan's Religious Intolerance, America, and the World: A History of Forgetting and Remembering makes an intriguing case for how American Protestants presented themselves as advocates for religious and civil liberty abroad while often instigating religious intolerance at home. -- Reading Religion Corrigan's Religious Intolerance, America, and the World is an exceptionally rich exploration of this topic, and a short review can hardly do justice to the nuances of his arguments and the breadth of his evidence. His interpretation of the psychological mechanism at play is especially provocative and worth contemplating. . . Religious Intolerance, America, and the World will be read with profit by scholars of American religious and political history, and will be highly suitable for graduate seminars on these subjects. -- Religion Religious Intolerance, America, and the World is a magisterial work. It is a beautifully written and persuasively--even relentlessly--argued book, with a sweeping historical arc that begins in the colonial period and ends with the current presidency of Donald Trump. Through incisive analysis of an absolutely stunning array of primary sources, Corrigan marshals a mountain of persuasive evidence. His bookis a major and much-needed contribution to our current historical moment. -- Heather Curtis, Tufts University

Author Information

John Corrigan is the Lucius Moody Bristol Distinguished Professor of Religion and professor of history at Florida State University. He is the author of Emptiness: Feeling Christian in America, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

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