The Practice of Pluralism

The clash of modernity and an Amish buggy might be the first image that comes to one&’s mind when imagining Lancaster, Pennsylvania, today. 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 3,000 inhabitants; it stood as a center of commerce, industry, and trade. Of course the German-speaking population&—Anabaptists as well as German Lutherans, Moravians, and German Calvinists&—made up the majority, but 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 H&äberlein confirms that religion in Lancaster was neither on the decline nor rapidly changing; rather, steady and deliberate growth marked a diverse religious population.