Religious Pluralism: History of a Contested American Ideal

Minnesota has always been home to a diverse array of religious traditions, but any significant embrace of that diversity has been a long, halting process. Historian William R. Hutchison usefully distinguishes between the fact of religious diversity and the fuller engagement with that diversity that he understands as pluralism.  Hutchison tells the story of American religious diversity in terms of stages in the understanding of pluralism: from pluralism as toleration throughout the 19^th century to pluralism as inclusion in the late 19th and early 20^th century, to something approaching the fuller vision of pluralism as participation from the 1960s on.¹ But Hutchison sees this not so much as stages than as overlapping and contentious approaches to religious diversity at any given time. This narrative of the gradual increase over time is belied in Minnesota by a robust engagement with religious diversity practiced by the region’s Indigenous peoples.