The Practice of Pluralism

Congregational Life and Religious Diversity in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1730–1820

Mark Häberlein

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780271035215
• eBook ISBN:
  9780271078137
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Early American History

The clash of modernity and an Amish buggy might be the first image that comes to one's mind when imagining Lancaster, Pennsylvania, today. But in the early to mid-eighteenth century, Lancaster stood apart as an active and religiously diverse, ethnically complex, and bustling city. On the eve of the American Revolution, Lancaster's population had risen to nearly three thousand inhabitants; it stood as a center of commerce, industry, and trade. While the German-speaking population—Anabaptists as well as German Lutherans, Moravians, and German Calvinists—made up the majority, about one-third were English-speaking Anglicans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Quakers, Calvinists, and other Christian groups. A small group of Jewish families also lived in Lancaster, though they had no synagogue. Carefully mining historical records and documents, from tax records to church membership rolls, Mark Häberlein confirms that religion in Lancaster was neither on the decline nor rapidly changing; rather, steady and deliberate growth marked a diverse religious population.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. A Quest for Order: The German Reformed Congregation, 1733-1775
• 2. Growth and Disruption: Lutherans and Moravians
• 3. The English Churches of Colonial Lancaster
• 4. Religious Pluralism in an Eighteenth-Century Town
• 5. Lancaster's Churches in the New Republic
• 6. The Transformation of Charity, 1750-1820
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover