Evan Haefeli, "Accidental Pluralism: America and the Religious Politics of English Expansion, 1497-1662" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

The University of Chicago Press Podcast · Oct 17, 2022 · 40m

Origin stories of the United States often highlight religious freedom as a foundational pillar of the earliest English settlers. But Evan Haefeli tells a more complex story in Accidental Pluralism: America and the Religious Politics of English Expansion, 1497–1662 (University of Chicago Press, 2021). In this ambitious contribution to the origins of American religious tolerance, Haefeli argues that religious diversity was rarely the hoped-for goal of English expansion in the Atlantic. Rather, toleration arose of necessity from the collapse of political control over the English state church in…