ABSTRACT
In this chapter, by way of three examples, the reader will be introduced to a constant in the history of religion in America, namely the appearance of religious groups that at least for a time lay outside America’s religious mainstream, but challenged the nation, each in its own way, to find its place under the religious sacred canopy of acceptance. Although not without resistance, and on their own terms, African Americans, present from the very founding of the British colonies of North America, were forced to make the Christianity imposed on them their own. Similarly, Roman Catholics were present from the seventeenth century, but when their numbers exploded in the first half of the nineteenth century, they faced considerable and often violent opposition. And finally, the Mormons, a later development but also the first major native born religion in America, nevertheless struggled to maintain the central tenets of their faith and for acceptance.
