Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I: Roger Williams and the Seventeenth-Century's Lively Experiments -- How Special was Rhode Island? The Global Context of the 1663 Charter / Evan Haefeli -- 'Livelie Experiment' and 'Holy Experiment' : Two Trajectories of Religious Liberty / Andrew R. Murphy -- Toleration and Tolerance in Early Modern England / Scott Sowerby -- "When the Word of The Lord Runs Freely" : Roger Williams and Evangelical Toleration / Teresa Bejan -- Part II: Toleration, Revival, and Enlightenment in the Long Eighteenth Century -- Muslims, Toleration, and Civil Rights, from Roger Williams to Thomas Jefferson / Denise Spellberg -- "An encroachment on our religious rights" : Methodist Missions, Slavery, and Religious Toleration in the British Atlantic World / Christopher C. Jones -- "Between God and our own Souls" : The Discussion over Toleration in Eighteenth-Century America / Keith Pacholl -- Part III: Divisions Within : Protestants and Catholics in the New Nation -- "Enlightened, Tolerant, and Liberal" : Mathew Carey, Catholicism and Religious Freedom in the New Republic / Nicholas Pellegrino -- Making an American Church : Communal Toleration and Republican Governance in Early National Charleston and New York / Susanna Linsley -- The Nineteenth-Century "School Question" : An Episode in Religious Intolerance or an Expansion of Religious Freedom? / Steven K. Green -- Part IV: Pluralism and Its Discontents : Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Contests Over Religious Difference -- "There is no such thing as a reverend of no church" : Incarcerated Children, Nonsectarian Religion, and Freedom of Worship in Gilded Age New York City / Jacob Betz -- The Cost of Inclusion : Interfaith Unity and Intrafaith Division in the Formation of Protestant-Catholic-Jewish America / David Mislin -- Dog Tags : Religious Toleration and the Politics of American Military Identification / Ronit Y. Stahl -- Part V: Ecumenism's Paradoxes : Religious Dissent and the Redefinition of the Modern Religious Mainstream -- "This Is a Mighty Warfare that We Are Engaged In" : Pentecostals in Early Twentieth-Century New England / Evelyn Savidge Sterne -- How the Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses Changed American Law and Religion / Shawn Francis Peters -- The First Mormon Moment : The Latter-Day Saints in American Culture 1940-1965 / Christine Hutchison-Jones -- The National Council of Churches versus Right-Wing Radio : How the Mainline Muted the New Christian Right / Paul Matzko -- Part VI: Civil or Religious? : The New Boundaries of Religious Tolerance -- Pseudo Religion and Real Religion : The Modern Anticult Movement and Religious Freedom in America / James B. Bennett -- America Beyond Civil Religion : The Anabaptist Experience / Kip A. Wedel.

Three hundred and fifty years ago, Roger Williams launched one of the world's first great experiments in religious toleration. Insisting that religion be separated from civil power, he founded Rhode Island, a colony that welcomed people of many faiths. Though stark forms of intolerance persisted, Williams' commitments to faith and liberty of conscience came to define the nation and its conception of itself. Through crisp essays that show how Americans demolished old prejudices while inventing new ones, The Lively Experiment offers a comprehensive account of America's boisterous history of interreligious relations. - Publisher.