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Peter Gottschalk is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Southwestern University.

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Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
I received a free early reviewers copy of this book via the Library Thing Early Reviewers program.

As Americans, we proudly proclaim our religious tolerance and maintain that our country was built on religious freedom. While many forms of religious expression have flourished in the United States, Gottschalk reminds of the many instances of religious intolerance in our country from earliest settlement to the present day. The book is divided into seven chapters focusing on:

  1. Puritan persecution of Quakers in colonial Massachusetts

  2. The struggles of Irish Catholic immigrants in Protestant-dominated cities in the 19th century

  3. The Ghost Dance and the extermination of the Sioux

  4. 20th prejudice against Jews by the Ku Klux Klan, Henry Ford, and immigration restrictions

  5. The Latter Day Saints struggle against violent opposition in the 19th century and how the political careers of George and Mitt Romney show a growing acceptance.

  6. The Branch Davidians and the vilifying of outsider groups as cults

  7. Islamophobia in the wake of the September 11th attacks


The book is short for all the topics it covers and Gottschalk really only touches upon these various topics. The author can get oddly deep into some parts of the topics while being very broad at other times. I also found it troubling how much he defends the Branch Davidians as a persecuted minority rather than recognizing that child rape and their vast military arsenal were a threat to the community at large.

It's an interesting overview, and if you have a familiarity with American history there shouldn't be too many surprises. But if you think that religious groups have always been welcomed in the United States, you'll want to read this book.
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Othemts | 9 weitere Rezensionen | Apr 6, 2014 |
Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
We Americans are always proud of the First Amendment to the Constitution, but we aren’t always sure what it says or what it means.

To refresh: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The problem, as Peter Gottschalk ably explains, is that we really don’t live up to those words. We quibble over what a religion is to start and then what it means to allow others to exercise their beliefs. From the start, the Massachusetts Bay Colony whose founders came to the New World because of religious prosecution, determined that everyone need to worship in the same way and to believe the same things. Roger Williams left to found Rhode Island and Mary Dyer, a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers) was hung.

From those beginnings, we proceeded to discrimination against Catholics, Jews, Mormons, various cults, and, now Muslims. Gottschalk makes a strong case for his belief that religious discrimination is often tied to racial/ethnic discrimination and often arises when a majority feels threatened by difference.

Our founders wanted to be different from England where the head of state – the Queen – is also the head of the Church of England. Gottschalk argues this lead to the desire to found a secular state and to the First Amendment.

I have to say that I found myself cringing at times as Gottschalk recounts how and why we mistreated so many throughout our history. This is a good, relatively short, history of our religious intolerance.
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Maya47Bob46 | 9 weitere Rezensionen | Feb 8, 2014 |
Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
The “Other” has been part of America’s history from the beginning. Those people who are deemed outside your society, who are believed to be inferior or dangerous, who believe that what you believe in is false are the “Other.” Peter Gottschalk looks over American history and shows how fear of the “Other” caused conflict and often resulted in death throughout American history

Pilgrims, who every year are honored at Thanksgiving, were afraid of the “Others” persecuted Quakers. Bostonians and New Yorkers in the 19th century considered Irish Catholics as un-American and un-Christian. Native Americans, the first people on this continent, were considered heathens, and Henry Ford and the Ku Klux Klan condemned Jews and American blacks as less than human and found support throughout the country for these beliefs Mormons and the Branch Davidians achieved “cult” status in this century. How could people follow their beliefs so different from “ours”? They must be a cult--the “Other.” Peter Gottschalk confessed that early in life he was Islamophobic--only in adulthood did he come to understand his own prejudice. Islam is not composed of terrorists, but Americans distrust and comdemn Muslims, and have mistaken Sikhs as Muslims

Peter Gotttschalk succinctly shows how all these stories commonly occur in American religious history, producing unfortunate occurrences of religious intolerance. Assumptions about what a religious group or ethnicity believes, without real knowledge, often leads to suspicion and false judgments. Gottschalk suggests that these assumptions will continue unless more people are educated to the root causes. The principle of the Other leads the way. If as a people we listen and approach all with openness, we will learn not only what we are as humans, but also what our relationships with our fellow human beings can be. Dialog, conversation and acceptance will lead to better understanding. Unfortunately, Gottschalk doesn’t present steps to achieve this—he only explores the need for change.
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David_Chef | 9 weitere Rezensionen | Feb 3, 2014 |
Diese Rezension wurde für LibraryThing Early Reviewers geschrieben.
The comic Robin Williams once asked, “How uptight do you have to be in order for the British to tell you to get the fu*ck out?” He was talking about the Puritans and the beginning of American history. It may not be an accurate account of how things went down between the British government and this young Protestant break away religious group but the point is taken. This was a very uptight religious group, prosecuted for their fanatical ways.

It is ironic that this small prosecuted group of religious extremists, once settled in the new world, would then turn around and prosecute those with conflicting religious beliefs.

Academics have been struggling with the contracting ideas of America as the home of the free and its insistence that it is primarily a Christian nation. We are free to believe, but in order to make it America, we better believe in standard Christian dogma.

I bet if we counted them all up, we’d find hundreds books devoted to our history of religious intolerance. Since 9/11 it seems you can’t walk into any bookstore without tripping over the latest theory on why we are so intolerant and what this has done to us as a nation. I’ve read a few. These authors have something to teach us, whether it is a plea for tolerance or a history lesson on religions clashes in America.

The better ones are by authors who write as an attempt to hold a mirror to our society. If they makes us squirm it is only because we find ourselves thinking a long the same lines as those we read about. We may feel discomfort in our ability to identify with one type of intolerance or another. The job of these authors is to make us rethink our views.

Professor Peter Gottschalk, of Wesleyan is not one of these authors. His book American Heretics Catholics Jews Muslims and the history of religious intolerance made me squirm because his idea(s) about who exactly is intolerant is questionable. I cannot for the life of me figure out what his agenda is, other than to be a published author. If I were his professor and he turned in any of these chapters as an essay, I’d question his ability to clearly define his point and ask if he may not in fact be showing signs of intolerance.

In his chapter titled, “Fanatics: Secular fears and Mormon political candidates from Joseph Smith Jr. to Mitt Romney”, Gottschalk offers a far too long view that the Mormon history is fraught with political intolerance; that, due to no fault of their own, Mormons have had a hard time in American politics. Oh yeah, like Smith didn’t invite trouble everywhere he went. While it is true, Romney’s religion was talked about ad nauseam, it did not stop him from being on the Republican ticket. A point Gottschalk concedes: “None of these issues (what it means to be Mormon) played a significant role in the 2012 campaign.” So why did write this chapter Professor? What was your point? It would have made much more sense to have a chapter devoted to the struggles of religious minority candidates and include Kennedy and ever other religious political first. Gottschalk spends so much time on Mormonism and politics readers may wonder if this is an argument for Romney 2016.

My least favorite of his chapters is titled, “It’s not a religion, it’s a cult: The Branch Davidians”. Here Gottschalk does offer some interesting ideas on the word cult and its modern connotation: “The label ‘cults’ suggests that the application of the word says more about those who apply it than those it purportedly describes”. His point is well taken. Too often we label a religion that we do not understand or feel comfortable with as a cult. Gottschalk then goes into the long history of the Branch Davidians and gives a blow by blow account of the disastrous siege of the Davidian compound by the U.S. government in order to convince readers that the government’s intolerance of cults led to the death of innocent people. While I do not disagree the government used unnecessary force, Gottschalk never considers why they did. Gottschalk failed to consider that the government may have had Jones Town and Rajneesh (Antelope Oregon) in mind when they decided to take action.

What bothered me the most was Gottschalk’s link to the disaster of Waco and the Oklahoma bombing. He says, “..the disaster at Waco represents an imperious government’s massacre of those asserting their rights of religious expression and gun ownership”. He then goes on to talk about Timothy McVeigh and how this massacre led him to bomb a government building. It does not occur to Gottschalk to explore the possibility that it is the fanatic who calls himself a Christian, yet demands to be armed to the teeth, that is the problem. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think it is Christ who said, “You can have my gun when you pry it from my dead cold hand”. If I remember right, he said, “love your neighbor, turn the other cheek and the meek shall inherit the earth”. Timothy McVeigh was a very angry young man that was looking for any reason to get back at the government he thought had wronged him. If Waco had not happened something else would have set him off. It would have served Gottschalk better had he noted that religious fanatics and weapons are never a good mix.

Some of Gottschalk’s chapters do offer historical accounts of religious intolerance yet he fails to look deeply at the root causes of these cases. He fails to show his readers the reasons Muslim extremists hate the western culture or how some Christian leaders pushed an ant-Muslim view on their followers after 9/11. This is the heart of the problem with Gottschalk’s book. He blames everything but religion on religious intolerance.
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Sarij | 9 weitere Rezensionen | Feb 2, 2014 |

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