It is impossible to examine the place of conflict involving religion in America without first knowing how Americans perceive the role of conflict in their society. In fact, until recently most views of American history selectively read conflict out of the national story, with one signal exception. That exception was, of course, race, whose salience was such that it could hardly be ignored. From slavery to the Civil War, from Reconstruction through segregation and lynchings, from Brown v. Board of Education to the civil rights movement, conflicts about race cast a shadow over both the American past and the American present. All other forms of conflict, however, tended to be ignored or forgotten, made the domains of specialists or of the interest groups they affected, as if a kind of collective amnesia had settled over the subject. This was true of labor strife and ethnic conflict, and it was also true of religious conflict. The overriding desire was for a picture of the American past that emphasized harmony rather than division.

At no time was this stronger than in the 1950s, the years of the Eisenhower presidency. Religion was said to be good in itself. The president himself was believed to have said, “I don't care what religion you are, as long as you believe in something,” although subsequent attempts to source the quotation have been unavailing.