How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the WestReligious 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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 81
... religious minorities. In spite of this, however, it is also true that most of the American people have never ceased to regard freedom of religion as one of their basic and most precious rights. Today, following our recent entrance into ...
... religions past and present, Christianity has been by far the most intolerant. This statement may come as a shock, but it is nevertheless true. In spite of the fact that Jesus Christ, the Jewish founder of the Christian religion, is ...
... religion waged between Catholicism and Protestantism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, countless thousands of people on both sides perished or were forced to go into exile as the victims of religious persecution. It was the ...
... religious toleration and freedom of religion. To be sure, they regard political freedom as equally precious and indispensable; but they also commonly recognize that in our own time this freedom with its related political rights is so ...
... religious cults, provided their votaries also complied with the worship of the divine emperor as part of the state religion. Unlike Christianity and Judaism, Roman religion had no sacred scriptures and did not depend on any creed ...
Contents
1 | |
14 | |
The Advent of Protestantism and the Toleration Problem | 46 |
The First Champion of Religious Toleration Sebastian Castellio | 93 |
The Toleration Controversy in the Netherlands | 145 |
The Great English Toleration Controversy 16401660 | 188 |
John Locke and Pierre Bayle | 240 |
Conclusion The Idea of Religious Toleration in the Enlightenment and After | 289 |
NOTES | 313 |
INDEX | 367 |