{"product_id":"the-opening-of-the-protestant-mark-valeri-9780197663677","title":"The Opening of the Protestant Mind: How Anglo-American Protestants Embraced Religious Liberty","description":"During the mid-seventeenth century, Anglo-American Protestants described Native American ceremonies as savage devilry, Islamic teaching as violent chicanery, and Catholicism as repugnant superstition. By the mid-eighteenth century, they would describe amicable debates between evangelical missionaries and Algonquian religious leaders about the moral appeal of Christianity, recount learned conversations between English merchants and Muslim scholars, and tell of encounters with hospitable and sincere priests in Catholic Canada and Europe. What explains this poignant shift? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eUsing a variety of sources--travel narratives, dictionaries and encyclopaedias of the world's religions, missionary tracts, and sermons, \u003cem\u003eThe Opening of the Protestant Mind\u003c\/em\u003e traces a transformation in how English and colonial American Protestants described other religions during a crucial period of English colonization of North America. After the English Revolution of 1688 and the subsequent growth of the British empire, observers began to link Britain's success to civic moral virtues, including religious toleration, rather than to any particular religious creed. Mark Valeri shows how a wide range of Protestants--including liberal Anglicans, Calvinist dissenters, deists, and evangelicals--began to see other religions not as entirely good or entirely bad, but as complex, and to evaluate them according to their commitment to religious liberty. In the view of these Protestants, varieties of religion that eschewed political power were laudable, while types of religion that combined priestly authority with political power were illegitimate. They also changed their evangelistic practices, jettisoning civilizing agendas in favor of reasoned persuasion. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eValeri neither valorizes Anglo-Protestants nor condemns them. Instead, he reveals the deep ambiguities in their ideas while showing how those ideas contained the seeds of modern religious liberty.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Mark Valeri\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0197663672\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780197663677\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Oxford University Press, USA\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 07\/28\/2023\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 312\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.38lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.32h x 6.49w x 0.97d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 04\/01\/2024","brand":"Mark Valeri","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":44181521793279,"sku":"9780197663677","price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_859c27ae-ecf2-4a25-9071-3cbb43014f14.jpg?v=1690260899","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-opening-of-the-protestant-mark-valeri-9780197663677","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}