The settlers of New Netherland were obligated to uphold religious toleration as a legal right by the Dutch Republic's founding document, the 1579 Union of Utrecht, which stated that "everyone shall remain free in religion and that no one may be persecuted or investigated because of religion." For early American historians this statement, unique in the world at its time, lies at the root of American pluralism. New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty offers a new reading of the way tolerance operated in colonial America. Using sources in several languages and looking at laws and ideas as well as their enforcement and resistance, Evan Haefeli shows that, although tolerance as a general principle was respected in the colony, there was a pronounced struggle against it in practice. Crucial to the fate of New Netherland were the changing religious and political dynamics within the English empire. In the end, Haefeli argues, the most crucial factor in laying the groundwork for religious tolerance in colonial America was less what the Dutch did than their loss of the region to the English at a moment when the English were unusually open to religious tolerance. This legacy, often overlooked, turns out to be critical to the history of American religious diversity. By setting Dutch America within its broader imperial context, New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty offers a comprehensive and nuanced history of a conflict integral to the histories of the Dutch republic, early America, and religious tolerance.

"The Dutch colony of New Netherland in the seventeenth century enjoyed a greater diversity of religious beliefs than any of the English colonies in America at the time, except possibly Rhode Island. George L. Procter-Smith has investigated the background and reasons for this religious diversity and toleration despite the legal establishment of the Dutch Reformed Church. All colonies have to be understood in terms of their mother country; but, Procter-Smith insists, the European background is especially important in the study of New Netherland. He devotes about half the book to the religious situation in the Netherlands and the de facto toleration that existed despite the state church. "The Dutch colony in America was founded for trade, not for religious reasons which were so prominent in the neighboring English colonies. As the Dutch directors of the West India Company, the colony's proprietor, tried to recruit settlers, they realized that intolerance and religious persecution would keep many prospective settlers away. Consequently, they paid lip service to the Dutch Reformed establishment but in practice allowed dissenters to practice their religion in private. Procter-Smith has written a clear, persuasive account of religion and politics, as shaped by the Dutch trading interests, in both Europe and New Netherland."—Review for Religious: A Journal of Catholic Spirituality

The United States has long been defined by its religious diversity and recurrent public debates over the religious and political values that define it. In Accidental Pluralism, Evan Haefeli argues that America did not begin as a religiously diverse and tolerant society. It became so only because England’s religious unity collapsed just as America was being colonized. By tying the emergence of American religious toleration to global events, Haefeli creates a true transnationalist history that links developing American realities to political and social conflicts and resolutions in Europe, showing how the relationships among states, churches, and publics were contested from the beginning of the colonial era and produced a society that no one had anticipated. Accidental Pluralism is an ambitious and comprehensive new account of the origins of American religious life that compels us to refine our narratives about what came to be seen as American values and their distinct relationship to religion and politics.

Explores the influence of Dutch law and jurisprudence in colonial America.