How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West

How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West PDF Author: Perez Zagorin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691121427
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
Religious intolerance, so terrible and deadly in its recent manifestations, is nothing new. In fact, until after the eighteenth century, Christianity was perhaps the most intolerant of all the great world religions. How Christian Europe and the West went from this extreme to their present universal belief in religious toleration is the momentous story fully told for the first time in this timely and important book by a leading historian of early modern Europe. Perez Zagorin takes readers to a time when both the Catholic Church and the main new Protestant denominations embraced a policy of endorsing religious persecution, coercing unity, and, with the state's help, mercilessly crushing dissent and heresy. This position had its roots in certain intellectual and religious traditions, which Zagorin traces before showing how out of the same traditions came the beginnings of pluralism in the West. Here we see how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century thinkers--writing from religious, theological, and philosophical perspectives--contributed far more than did political expediency or the growth of religious skepticism to advance the cause of toleration. Reading these thinkers--from Erasmus and Sir Thomas More to John Milton and John Locke, among others--Zagorin brings to light a common, if unexpected, thread: concern for the spiritual welfare of religion itself weighed more in the defense of toleration than did any secular or pragmatic arguments. His book--which ranges from England through the Netherlands, the post-1685 Huguenot Diaspora, and the American Colonies--also exposes a close connection between toleration and religious freedom. A far-reaching and incisive discussion of the major writers, thinkers, and controversies responsible for the emergence of religious tolerance in Western society--from the Enlightenment through the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights--this original and richly nuanced work constitutes an essential chapter in the intellectual history of the modern world.

How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West

How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West PDF Author: Perez Zagorin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691121427
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

Get Book Here

Book Description
Religious intolerance, so terrible and deadly in its recent manifestations, is nothing new. In fact, until after the eighteenth century, Christianity was perhaps the most intolerant of all the great world religions. How Christian Europe and the West went from this extreme to their present universal belief in religious toleration is the momentous story fully told for the first time in this timely and important book by a leading historian of early modern Europe. Perez Zagorin takes readers to a time when both the Catholic Church and the main new Protestant denominations embraced a policy of endorsing religious persecution, coercing unity, and, with the state's help, mercilessly crushing dissent and heresy. This position had its roots in certain intellectual and religious traditions, which Zagorin traces before showing how out of the same traditions came the beginnings of pluralism in the West. Here we see how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century thinkers--writing from religious, theological, and philosophical perspectives--contributed far more than did political expediency or the growth of religious skepticism to advance the cause of toleration. Reading these thinkers--from Erasmus and Sir Thomas More to John Milton and John Locke, among others--Zagorin brings to light a common, if unexpected, thread: concern for the spiritual welfare of religion itself weighed more in the defense of toleration than did any secular or pragmatic arguments. His book--which ranges from England through the Netherlands, the post-1685 Huguenot Diaspora, and the American Colonies--also exposes a close connection between toleration and religious freedom. A far-reaching and incisive discussion of the major writers, thinkers, and controversies responsible for the emergence of religious tolerance in Western society--from the Enlightenment through the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights--this original and richly nuanced work constitutes an essential chapter in the intellectual history of the modern world.

Making Toleration

Making Toleration PDF Author: Scott Sowerby
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674075919
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
Though James II is often depicted as a Catholic despot who imposed his faith, Scott Sowerby reveals a king ahead of his time who pressed for religious toleration at the expense of his throne. The Glorious Revolution was in fact a conservative counter-revolution against the movement for enlightened reform that James himself encouraged and sustained.

Conscience and Community

Conscience and Community PDF Author: Andrew R. Murphy
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271041377
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Religious toleration appears near the top of any short list of core liberal democratic values. Theorists from John Locke to John Rawls emphasize important interconnections between the principles of toleration, constitutional government, and the rule of law. Conscience and Community revisits the historical emergence of religious liberty in the Anglo-American tradition, looking deeper than the traditional emergence of toleration to find not a series of self-evident or logically connected expansions but instead a far more complex evolution. Murphy argues that contemporary liberal theorists have misunderstood and misconstrued the actual historical development of toleration in theory and practice. Murphy approaches the concept through three "myths" about religious toleration: that it was opposed only by ignorant, narrow-minded persecutors; that it was achieved by skeptical Enlightenment rationalists; and that tolerationist arguments generalize easily from religion to issues such as gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality, providing a basis for identity politics.

John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture

John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture PDF Author: John Marshall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 052165114X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 700

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Book Description
Major intellectual and cultural history of intolerance and toleration in early modern Enlightenment Europe.

Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558-1689

Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558-1689 PDF Author: John Coffey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317884426
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This fascinating work is the first overview of its subject to be published in over half a century. The issues it deals with are key to early modern political, religious and cultural history. The seventeenth century is traditionally regarded as a period of expanding and extended liberalism, when superstition and received truth were overthrown. The book questions how far England moved towards becoming a liberal society at that time and whether or not the end of the century crowned a period of progress, or if one set of intolerant orthodoxies had simply been replaced by another. The book examines what toleration means now and meant then, explaining why some early modern thinkers supported persecution and how a growing number came to advocate toleration. Introduced with a survey of concepts and theory, the book then studies the practice of toleration at the time of Elizabeth I and the Stuarts, the Puritan Revolution and the Restoration. The seventeenth century emerges as a turning point after which, for the first time, a good Christian society also had to be a tolerant one. Persecution and Toleration is a critical addition to the study of early modern Britain and to religious and political history.

Protestant Pluralism

Protestant Pluralism PDF Author: Ralph Stevens
Publisher: Studies in Modern British Reli
ISBN: 9781783273294
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
The 1689 Toleration Act marked a profound shift in the English religious landscape. By permitting the public worship of Protestant Dissenters, the statute laid the foundations for legal religious pluralism, albeit limited, and ensured that eighteenth-century English society would be multi-denominational. However, the Act was rushed, incomplete and on many issues fundamentally ambiguous. It therefore threw up numerous practical difficulties for the clergy of the Church of England, who were deeply divided about what the legislation implied. This book explores how the Church reacted to the legal establishment of a multi-denominational religious environment and how it came to terms with religious pluralism. Thanks to the Toleration Act's inherent ambiguity, there was genuine confusion over how far it extended. The book examines how the practicalities of toleration and pluralism were worked out in the decades after 1689. A series of five case studies addresses: political participation; the movement for the reformation of manners; baptism; education; and the use of chapels. These studies illustrate how the Toleration Act influenced the lived experiences of the clergy and the effects that it had on their pastoral role. The book places the Act in its broader context, at the end of England's 'long Reformation', and emphasises how, far from representing a defining constitutional moment, the Act heralded a process of experimentation, debate and adjustment. RALPH STEVENS is a Tutor in History at University College Dublin.

A Letter Concerning Toleration. By John Locke, Esq

A Letter Concerning Toleration. By John Locke, Esq PDF Author: John Locke
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Toleration
Languages : en
Pages : 86

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Book Description


Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam

Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam PDF Author: Nabil Matar
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231156642
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Henry Stubbe (1632–1676) was a revolutionary English scholar who understood Islam as a monotheistic revelation in continuity with Judaism and Christianity. His major work, An Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahometanism, was the first English text to positively document the Prophet Muhammad’s life, celebrate the Qur’an as a divine revelation, and praise the Muslim toleration of Christians, undermining a long legacy of European prejudice and hostility. Nabil Matar, a leading scholar of Islamic-Western relations, standardizes Stubbe’s text and situates it within England’s theological climate. He shows how, to draw a positive portrait of Muhammad, Stubbe embraced travelogues, early church histories, Arabic chronicles, Latin commentaries, and studies on Jewish customs and scriptures, produced in the language of Islam and in the midst of the Islamic polity.

Persecution & Toleration

Persecution & Toleration PDF Author: Noel D. Johnson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110842502X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
In this book, Noel D. Johnson and Mark Koyama tackle the question: how does religious liberty develop?

The King and the Catholics

The King and the Catholics PDF Author: Antonia Fraser
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0525564837
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
In the eighteenth century, the Catholics of England lacked many basic freedoms under the law: they could not serve in political office, buy or inherit land, or be married by the rites of their own religion. So virulent was the sentiment against Catholics that, in 1780, violent riots erupted in London—incited by the anti-Papist Lord George Gordon—in response to the Act for Relief that had been passed to loosen some of these restrictions. The Gordon Riots marked a crucial turning point in the fight for Catholic emancipation. Over the next fifty years, factions battled to reform the laws of the land. Kings George III and George IV refused to address the “Catholic Question,” even when pressed by their prime ministers. But in 1829, through the dogged work of charismatic Irish lawyer Daniel O’Connell and the support of the great Duke of Wellington, the watershed Roman Catholic Relief Act finally passed, opening the door to the radical transformation of the Victorian age. Gripping, spirited, and incisive, The King and the Catholics is character-driven narrative history at its best, reflecting the dire consequences of state-sanctioned oppression—and showing how sustained political action can triumph over injustice.