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Author : David Lynn Holmes
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)
Download or read book The Religion of the Founding Fathers written by David Lynn Holmes and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Author : David L. Holmes
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199740968
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)
Download or read book The Faiths of the Founding Fathers written by David L. Holmes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-05-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is not uncommon to hear Christians argue that America was founded as a Christian nation. But how true is this claim? In this compact book, David L. Holmes offers a clear, concise and illuminating look at the spiritual beliefs of our founding fathers. He begins with an informative account of the religious culture of the late colonial era, surveying the religious groups in each colony. In particular, he sheds light on the various forms of Deism that flourished in America, highlighting the profound influence this intellectual movement had on the founding generation. Holmes then examines the individual beliefs of a variety of men and women who loom large in our national history. He finds that some, like Martha Washington, Samuel Adams, John Jay, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson's daughters, held orthodox Christian views. But many of the most influential figures, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John and Abigail Adams, Jefferson, James and Dolley Madison, and James Monroe, were believers of a different stripe. Respectful of Christianity, they admired the ethics of Jesus, and believed that religion could play a beneficial role in society. But they tended to deny the divinity of Christ, and a few seem to have been agnostic about the very existence of God. Although the founding fathers were religious men, Holmes shows that it was a faith quite unlike the Christianity of today's evangelicals. Holmes concludes by examining the role of religion in the lives of the presidents since World War II and by reflecting on the evangelical resurgence that helped fuel the reelection of George W. Bush. An intriguing look at a neglected aspect of our history, the book will appeal to American history buffs as well as to anyone concerned about the role of religion in American culture.
Author : Alf J. Mapp
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 9780742531154
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (311 download)
Download or read book The Faiths of Our Fathers written by Alf J. Mapp and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 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
ISBN 13 : 0195326490
Total Pages : 207 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (953 download)
Download or read book The Founding Fathers and the Debate Over Religion in Revolutionary America written by Matthew Harris and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether 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 : Gregg L. Frazer
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 0700620214
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (6 download)
Download or read book The Religious Beliefs of America's Founders written by Gregg L. Frazer and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Were America's Founders Christians or deists? Conservatives and secularists have taken each position respectively, mustering evidence to insist just how tall the wall separating church and state should be. Now Gregg Frazer puts their arguments to rest in the first comprehensive analysis of the Founders' beliefs as they themselves expressed them-showing that today's political right and left are both wrong. Going beyond church attendance or public pronouncements made for political ends, Frazer scrutinizes the Founders' candid declarations regarding religion found in their private writings. Distilling decades of research, he contends that these men were neither Christian nor deist but rather adherents of a system he labels "theistic rationalism," a hybrid belief system that combined elements of natural religion, Protestantism, and reason-with reason the decisive element. Frazer explains how this theological middle ground developed, what its core beliefs were, and how they were reflected in the thought of eight Founders: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington. He argues convincingly that Congregationalist Adams is the clearest example of theistic rationalism; that presumed deists Jefferson and Franklin are less secular than supposed; and that even the famously taciturn Washington adheres to this theology. He also shows that the Founders held genuinely religious beliefs that aligned with morality, republican government, natural rights, science, and progress. Frazer's careful explication helps readers better understand the case for revolutionary recruitment, the religious references in the Declaration of Independence, and the religious elements-and lack thereof-in the Constitution. He also reveals how influential clergymen, backing their theology of theistic rationalism with reinterpreted Scripture, preached and published liberal democratic theory to justify rebellion. Deftly blending history, religion, and political thought, Frazer succeeds in showing that the American experiment was neither a wholly secular venture nor an attempt to create a Christian nation founded on biblical principles. By showcasing the actual approach taken by these key Founders, he suggests a viable solution to the twenty-first-century standoff over the relationship between church and state-and challenges partisans on both sides to articulate their visions for America on their own merits without holding the Founders hostage to positions they never held.
Author : Steven Waldman
Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 0812974743
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (129 download)
Download or read book Founding Faith written by Steven Waldman and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2009-03-10 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The culture wars have distorted the dramatic story of how Americans came to worship freely. Many activists on the right maintain that the United States was founded as a “Christian nation.” Many on the left contend that the First Amendment was designed to boldly separate church and state. Neither of these claims is true, argues Beliefnet.com editor in chief Steven Waldman. With refreshing objectivity, Waldman narrates the real story of how our nation’s Founders forged a new approach to religious liberty. Founding Faith vividly describes the religious development of five Founders. Benjamin Franklin melded the Puritan theology of his youth and the Enlightenment philosophy of his adulthood. John Adams’s pungent views on religion stoked his revolutionary fervor and shaped his political strategy. George Washington came to view religious tolerance as a military necessity. Thomas Jefferson pursued a dramatic quest to “rescue” Jesus, in part by editing the Bible. Finally, it was James Madison who crafted an integrated vision of how to prevent tyranny while encouraging religious vibrancy. The spiritual custody battle over the Founding Fathers and the role of religion in America continues today. Waldman at last sets the record straight, revealing the real history of religious freedom to be dramatic, unexpected, paradoxical, and inspiring.
Author : Jon Meacham
Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 0812976665
Total Pages : 449 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (129 download)
Download or read book American Gospel written by Jon Meacham and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2007-03-20 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham reveals how the Founding Fathers viewed faith—and how they ultimately created a nation in which belief in God is a matter of choice. At a time when our country seems divided by extremism, American Gospel draws on the past to offer a new perspective. Meacham re-creates the fascinating history of a nation grappling with religion and politics–from John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” sermon to Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence; from the Revolution to the Civil War; from a proposed nineteenth-century Christian Amendment to the Constitution to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for civil rights; from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. Debates about religion and politics are often more divisive than illuminating. Secularists point to a “wall of separation between church and state,” while many conservatives act as though the Founding Fathers were apostles in knee britches. As Meacham shows in this brisk narrative, neither extreme has it right. At the heart of the American experiment lies the God of what Benjamin Franklin called “public religion,” a God who invests all human beings with inalienable rights while protecting private religion from government interference. It is a great American balancing act, and it has served us well. Meacham has written and spoken extensively about religion and politics, and he brings historical authority and a sense of hope to the issue. American Gospel makes it compellingly clear that the nation’s best chance of summoning what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” lies in recovering the spirit and sense of the Founding. In looking back, we may find the light to lead us forward. Praise for American Gospel “In his American Gospel, Jon Meacham provides a refreshingly clear, balanced, and wise historical portrait of religion and American politics at exactly the moment when such fairness and understanding are much needed. Anyone who doubts the relevance of history to our own time has only to read this exceptional book.”—David McCullough, author of 1776 “Jon Meacham has given us an insightful and eloquent account of the spiritual foundation of the early days of the American republic. It is especially instructive reading at a time when the nation is at once engaged in and deeply divided on the question of religion and its place in public life.”—Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation
Author : David L. Holmes
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0195300920
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (953 download)
Download or read book The Faiths of the Founding Fathers written by David L. Holmes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-05 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this compact book, the author offers a clear, concise and illuminating look at the spiritual beliefs of the founding fathers. Although the founding fathers were religious men, Holmes shows that it was a faith quite unlike the Christianity of today's evangelicals.
Author : Thomas S. Kidd
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300228147
Total Pages : 285 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)
Download or read book Benjamin Franklin written by Thomas S. Kidd and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-23 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new biography, illuminating the great mystery of Benjamin Franklin’s faith Renowned as a printer, scientist, and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin also published more works on religious topics than any other eighteenth-century American layperson. Born to Boston Puritans, by his teenage years Franklin had abandoned the exclusive Christian faith of his family and embraced deism. But Franklin, as a man of faith, was far more complex than the “thorough deist” who emerges in his autobiography. As Thomas Kidd reveals, deist writers influenced Franklin’s beliefs, to be sure, but devout Christians in his life—including George Whitefield, the era’s greatest evangelical preacher; his parents; and his beloved sister Jane—kept him tethered to the Calvinist creed of his Puritan upbringing. Based on rigorous research into Franklin’s voluminous correspondence, essays, and almanacs, this fresh assessment of a well-known figure unpacks the contradictions and conundrums faith presented in Franklin’s life.
Author : Tim LaHaye
Publisher : New Leaf Publishing Group
ISBN 13 : 0890512019
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (95 download)
Download or read book Faith of Our Founding Fathers written by Tim LaHaye and published by New Leaf Publishing Group. This book was released on 1996-06 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secular textbooks now fill our classrooms, while the Ten Commandments have been removed from their walls. Is this the vision held by those who worked to found this nation? What faith did our founding fathers truly believe and practice in their daily lives, and what does it really matter for us? Were they God-fearing, Bible-believing Christians or simply enlightened Deists, Transcendentalists, and Unitarians?
Author : James H. Hutson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 156 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (327 download)
Download or read book Religion and the Founding of the American Republic written by James H. Hutson and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A balanced and lively look at the role of religion between colonization and the 1840s.
Author : Daniel L. Dreisbach
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019984335X
Total Pages : 379 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (998 download)
Download or read book Faith and the Founders of the American Republic written by Daniel L. Dreisbach and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-05 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirteen essays written by leading scholars explore the impact of a rich variety of religious traditions on the political thought of America's founders.
Author : John Fea
Publisher : Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN 13 : 1611640881
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (116 download)
Download or read book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? written by John Fea and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2011-02-16 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fea offers an even-handed primer on whether America was founded to be a Christian nation, as many evangelicals assert, or a secular state, as others contend. He approaches the title's question from a historical perspective, helping readers see past the emotional rhetoric of today to the recorded facts of our past. Readers on both sides of the issues will appreciate that this book occupies a middle ground, noting the good points and the less-nuanced arguments of both sides and leading us always back to the primary sources that our shared American history comprises.
Author : Mark David Hall
Publisher : HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN 13 : 1400211115
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (2 download)
Download or read book Did America Have a Christian Founding? written by Mark David Hall and published by HarperChristian + ORM. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A distinguished professor debunks the assertion that America's Founders were deists who desired the strict separation of church and state and instead shows that their political ideas were profoundly influenced by their Christian convictions. In 2010, David Mark Hall gave a lecture at the Heritage Foundation entitled "Did America Have a Christian Founding?" His balanced and thoughtful approach to this controversial question caused a sensation. C-SPAN televised his talk, and an essay based on it has been downloaded more than 300,000 times. In this book, Hall expands upon this essay, making the airtight case that America's Founders were not deists. He explains why and how the Founders' views are absolutely relevant today, showing that they did not create a "godless" Constitution; that even Jefferson and Madison did not want a high wall separating church and state; that most Founders believed the government should encourage Christianity; and that they embraced a robust understanding of religious liberty for biblical and theological reasons. This compelling and utterly persuasive book will convince skeptics and equip believers and conservatives to defend the idea that Christian thought was crucial to the nation's founding--and that this benefits all of us, whatever our faith (or lack of faith).
Author : Melvin Eustace Bradford
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)
Download or read book Founding Fathers written by Melvin Eustace Bradford and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published : A worthy company. Marlborough, N.H. : Plymouth Rock Foundation, 1982.
Author : Denise Spellberg
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307388395
Total Pages : 418 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (73 download)
Download or read book Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an written by Denise Spellberg and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this original and illuminating book, Denise A. Spellberg reveals a little-known but crucial dimension of the story of American religious freedom—a drama in which Islam played a surprising role. In 1765, eleven years before composing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson bought a Qur’an. This marked only the beginning of his lifelong interest in Islam, and he would go on to acquire numerous books on Middle Eastern languages, history, and travel, taking extensive notes on Islam as it relates to English common law. Jefferson sought to understand Islam notwithstanding his personal disdain for the faith, a sentiment prevalent among his Protestant contemporaries in England and America. But unlike most of them, by 1776 Jefferson could imagine Muslims as future citizens of his new country. Based on groundbreaking research, Spellberg compellingly recounts how a handful of the Founders, Jefferson foremost among them, drew upon Enlightenment ideas about the toleration of Muslims (then deemed the ultimate outsiders in Western society) to fashion out of what had been a purely speculative debate a practical foundation for governance in America. In this way, Muslims, who were not even known to exist in the colonies, became the imaginary outer limit for an unprecedented, uniquely American religious pluralism that would also encompass the actual despised minorities of Jews and Catholics. The rancorous public dispute concerning the inclusion of Muslims, for which principle Jefferson’s political foes would vilify him to the end of his life, thus became decisive in the Founders’ ultimate judgment not to establish a Protestant nation, as they might well have done. As popular suspicions about Islam persist and the numbers of American Muslim citizenry grow into the millions, Spellberg’s revelatory understanding of this radical notion of the Founders is more urgent than ever. Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an is a timely look at the ideals that existed at our country’s creation, and their fundamental implications for our present and future.
Author : Gary A. Kowalski
Publisher : BlueBridge
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (89 download)
Download or read book Revolutionary Spirits written by Gary A. Kowalski and published by BlueBridge. This book was released on 2008 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Revolutionary Spirits" brings to life the complex creeds and personalities of America's founding fathers, and confronts many of the later myths about the religious views of some of the most notable figures in history. These founders worshiped Nature's God, not the God of the Bible, and sought spiritual inspiration in Creation rather than in the traditional religious creeds. They intended to found a republic of virtue, with the understanding that civic virtue entailed respect for the diverse religious landscape that characterized America from its very beginning. Together, they fashioned a new, democratic faith based on reasoned investigation rather than special revelation, grounded in free inquiry and the right of each individual to approach the Holy in his or her own manner. Offering clear and candid portraits of Franklin, Washington, Paine, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison as both religious reformers and political rebels, "Revolutionary Spirits" tells the illuminating story of these unorthodox men of faith and thought, and reclaims their spiritual inheritance for us all. -- From publisher's description.
