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Author: Daniel L. Dreisbach
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2014-05
Total Pages: 379
ISBN-13: 019984335X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThirteen essays written by leading scholars explore the impact of a rich variety of religious traditions on the political thought of America's founders.
Author: James H. Hutson
Publisher:
Published: 1998
Total Pages: 156
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA balanced and lively look at the role of religion between colonization and the 1840s.
Author: Frank Lambert
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2010-07-28
Total Pages: 342
ISBN-13: 1400825539
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow did the United States, founded as colonies with explicitly religious aspirations, come to be the first modern state whose commitment to the separation of church and state was reflected in its constitution? Frank Lambert explains why this happened, offering in the process a synthesis of American history from the first British arrivals through Thomas Jefferson's controversial presidency. Lambert recognizes that two sets of spiritual fathers defined the place of religion in early America: what Lambert calls the Planting Fathers, who brought Old World ideas and dreams of building a "City upon a Hill," and the Founding Fathers, who determined the constitutional arrangement of religion in the new republic. While the former proselytized the "one true faith," the latter emphasized religious freedom over religious purity. Lambert locates this shift in the mid-eighteenth century. In the wake of evangelical revival, immigration by new dissenters, and population expansion, there emerged a marketplace of religion characterized by sectarian competition, pluralism, and widened choice. During the American Revolution, dissenters found sympathetic lawmakers who favored separating church and state, and the free marketplace of religion gained legal status as the Founders began the daunting task of uniting thirteen disparate colonies. To avoid discord in an increasingly pluralistic and contentious society, the Founders left the religious arena free of government intervention save for the guarantee of free exercise for all. Religious people and groups were also free to seek political influence, ensuring that religion's place in America would always be a contested one, but never a state-regulated one. An engaging and highly readable account of early American history, this book shows how religious freedom came to be recognized not merely as toleration of dissent but as a natural right to be enjoyed by all Americans.
Author: Mark David Hall
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013
Total Pages: 239
ISBN-13: 019992984X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOne of leading figures of his day, Roger Sherman was a member of the five-man committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence and an influential delegate at the Constitutional Convention. As a Representative and Senator in the new republic, he had a hand in determining the proper scope of the national government's power as well as drafting the Bill of Rights. In Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic, Mark David Hall explores Sherman's political theory and shows how it informed his many contributions to America's founding. A close examination of Sherman's religious beliefs provides insight into how those beliefs informed his political actions. Hall shows that Sherman, like many founders, was influenced by Calvinist political thought, a tradition that played a role in the founding generation's opposition to Great Britain, and led them to develop political institutions designed to prevent corruption, promote virtue, and protect rights. Contrary to oft-repeated assertions that the founders advocated a strictly secular policy, Hall argues persuasively that most founders believed Christianity should play an important role in the new American republic.
Author: Thomas S Kidd
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2010-10-05
Total Pages: 306
ISBN-13: 0465022774
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA "thought-provoking, meticulously researched" testament to evangelical Christians' crucial contribution to American independence and a timely appeal for the same spiritual vitality today (Washington Times). At the dawn of the Revolutionary War, America was already a nation of diverse faiths-the First Great Awakening and Enlightenment concepts such as deism and atheism had endowed the colonists with varying and often opposed religious beliefs. Despite their differences, however, Americans found common ground against British tyranny and formed an alliance that would power the American Revolution. In God of Liberty, historian Thomas S. Kidd offers the first comprehensive account of religion's role during this transformative period and how it gave form to our nation and sustained it through its tumultuous birth -- and how it can be a force within our country during times of transition today.
Author: Alf J. Mapp
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 196
ISBN-13: 9780742531154
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this book, the author cuts through historical uncertainty to accurately portray the religious beliefs of 11 of America's founding fathers. (Motivation)
Author: Matthew Harris
Publisher: OUP USA
Published: 2012
Total Pages: 207
ISBN-13: 0195326490
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhether America was founded as a Christian nation or as a secular republic is one of the most fiercely debated questions in American history. Historians Matthew Harris and Thomas Kidd offer an authoritative examination of the essential documents needed to understand this debate. The texts included in this volume - writings and speeches from both well-known and obscure early American thinkers - show that religion played a prominent yet fractious role in the era of the American Revolution. In their personal beliefs, the Founders ranged from profound skeptics like Thomas Paine to traditional Christians like Patrick Henry. Nevertheless, most of the Founding Fathers rallied around certain crucial religious principles, including the idea that people were "created" equal, the belief that religious freedom required the disestablishment of state-backed denominations, the necessity of virtue in a republic, and the role of Providence in guiding the affairs of nations. Harris and Kidd show that through the struggles of war and the framing of the Constitution, Americans sought to reconcile their dedication to religious vitality with their commitment to religious freedom.
Author: Matthew Stewart
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2014-07-01
Total Pages: 502
ISBN-13: 0393244318
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLonglisted for the National Book Award. Where did the ideas come from that became the cornerstone of American democracy? America’s founders intended to liberate us not just from one king but from the ghostly tyranny of supernatural religion. Drawing deeply on the study of European philosophy, Matthew Stewart brilliantly tracks the ancient, pagan, and continental ideas from which America’s revolutionaries drew their inspiration. In the writings of Spinoza, Lucretius, and other great philosophers, Stewart recovers the true meanings of “Nature’s God,” “the pursuit of happiness,” and the radical political theory with which the American experiment in self-government began.
Author: James H. Hutson
Publisher:
Published: 1998
Total Pages: 160
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA balanced and lively look at the role of religion between colonization and the 1840s.
Author: Frank Lambert
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2010-02-21
Total Pages: 303
ISBN-13: 0691146136
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe acclaimed author of The Barbary Wars offers a critical analysis of the often uneasy relationship between religion and politics in the United States from the Founding Fathers to the twenty-first century.
