US religious freedom has always been conditioned on conformity to Anglo-Protestant norms

Evidence

I begin the intellectual journey by historicizing the racialization of religion in the United States because in American society religious freedom has always been circumscribed by race. In examining the experiences of Jews, Catholics, and Mormons from the turn of the twentieth century until World War II in chapters 2, 3, and 4, I illustrate how immigrants have always had to conform to Anglo-Saxon Protestant norms, language, and lifestyles in order to access socioeconomic privileges and legal rights of first-class citizenship. Thus, structural assimilation through English-only rules, staunch individualism, and capitalism undergirds American national identity. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 93

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the Lex Oppia and sumptuary-law material — assimilation pressures recast as conformity to dominant-group norms.
• SEED: Angle: ‘The Protestant template model of American assimilation’ — a piece tracing how Jews, Catholics, and Mormons were each expected to Protestantize their faith as the price of citizenship.