The Religious Origins of American Freedom and Equality

The Religious Origins of American Freedom and Equality

Author: David Peddle

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2014-05-15

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 0739189174

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The metaphor of a “wall of separation” between church and state obscures the substantial connection that exists between the Christian religion and American liberalism. The central thesis of this work challenges the legitimacy of this metaphor as it appears in Supreme Court decisions and in the thought of the philosopher John Rawls. The Religious Origins of American Freedom and Equality provides a provocative interpretation of the nature of Christian and liberal principles, suggesting that the principles of individual freedom and equality were forged even within the conservative elements of Calvinism and Puritanism. Recognition of this substantial intellectual connection has the potential to help reshape our conception of the separation of church and state by tempering the opposition between religious and political concepts and values. The purpose of The Religious Origins of American Freedom and Equality then, is to contribute to an understanding of public reason that is more open to the contributions of religious perspectives. The work attempts to show how religious doctrines, currently obscured by historical context and hermeneutical dogmatism, have nonetheless played a formative role in the evolution of the freedom and equality that is foundational to contemporary liberalism. Understanding the genesis of the concepts of freedom and equality tempers the conceptual opposition between church and state and allows a clearer more inclusive interpretation of the nature of their separation. The originality of the work is fourfold: (1) the challenge its central thesis poses to dominant constructions of public reason, freedom, and equality; (2) the interdisciplinary method through which it brings the findings of a variety of disciplines to bear on a central issues in political philosophy; (3) the challenge it brings to the analytic and pragmatic approach of contemporary liberalism through its assertion of the importance of historical context to contemporary ideas; and (4) the degree to which it engages theology in its relation to contemporary questions.


Book Synopsis The Religious Origins of American Freedom and Equality by : David Peddle

Download or read book The Religious Origins of American Freedom and Equality written by David Peddle and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The metaphor of a “wall of separation” between church and state obscures the substantial connection that exists between the Christian religion and American liberalism. The central thesis of this work challenges the legitimacy of this metaphor as it appears in Supreme Court decisions and in the thought of the philosopher John Rawls. The Religious Origins of American Freedom and Equality provides a provocative interpretation of the nature of Christian and liberal principles, suggesting that the principles of individual freedom and equality were forged even within the conservative elements of Calvinism and Puritanism. Recognition of this substantial intellectual connection has the potential to help reshape our conception of the separation of church and state by tempering the opposition between religious and political concepts and values. The purpose of The Religious Origins of American Freedom and Equality then, is to contribute to an understanding of public reason that is more open to the contributions of religious perspectives. The work attempts to show how religious doctrines, currently obscured by historical context and hermeneutical dogmatism, have nonetheless played a formative role in the evolution of the freedom and equality that is foundational to contemporary liberalism. Understanding the genesis of the concepts of freedom and equality tempers the conceptual opposition between church and state and allows a clearer more inclusive interpretation of the nature of their separation. The originality of the work is fourfold: (1) the challenge its central thesis poses to dominant constructions of public reason, freedom, and equality; (2) the interdisciplinary method through which it brings the findings of a variety of disciplines to bear on a central issues in political philosophy; (3) the challenge it brings to the analytic and pragmatic approach of contemporary liberalism through its assertion of the importance of historical context to contemporary ideas; and (4) the degree to which it engages theology in its relation to contemporary questions.


The Free and the Unfree

The Free and the Unfree

Author: Peter N. Carroll

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2001-08-01

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 0141001585

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The founding Fathers based the American system on principles of equality and freedom, but often people who made America their home faced inequality, injustice, and legal discrimination. The Free and the Unfree documents what happened when Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants, religious minorities, and women tested America's humanitarian and democratic principles. It surveys the social, cultural, political, and economic developments that broadened America's definition of freedom-from the earliest contacts with Native Americans and the Revolutionary War through the Civil Rights movement and the sexual revolution. The Free and the Unfree presents a concise, thorough, and up-to-date examination of the spirit and limits of freedom, providing readers with a little-known perspective on American history.


Book Synopsis The Free and the Unfree by : Peter N. Carroll

Download or read book The Free and the Unfree written by Peter N. Carroll and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-08-01 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The founding Fathers based the American system on principles of equality and freedom, but often people who made America their home faced inequality, injustice, and legal discrimination. The Free and the Unfree documents what happened when Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants, religious minorities, and women tested America's humanitarian and democratic principles. It surveys the social, cultural, political, and economic developments that broadened America's definition of freedom-from the earliest contacts with Native Americans and the Revolutionary War through the Civil Rights movement and the sexual revolution. The Free and the Unfree presents a concise, thorough, and up-to-date examination of the spirit and limits of freedom, providing readers with a little-known perspective on American history.


Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age

Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age

Author: Nelson Tebbe

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-01-01

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0674971434

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Nelson Tebbe shows how a method called social coherence offers a way to resolve conflicts between advocates of religious freedom and proponents of equality law. Based on the way people reason through moral problems in everyday life, it can lead to workable solutions in a wide range of issues, including gay rights and women’s reproductive choice.


Book Synopsis Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age by : Nelson Tebbe

Download or read book Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age written by Nelson Tebbe and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nelson Tebbe shows how a method called social coherence offers a way to resolve conflicts between advocates of religious freedom and proponents of equality law. Based on the way people reason through moral problems in everyday life, it can lead to workable solutions in a wide range of issues, including gay rights and women’s reproductive choice.


Story of American Freedom

Story of American Freedom

Author: Eric Foner

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 1999-09-07

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9780393319620

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Freedom is the cornerstone of his sweeping narrative that focuses not only congressional debates and political treatises since the Revolution but how the fight for freedom took place on plantation and picket lines and in parlors and bedrooms.


Book Synopsis Story of American Freedom by : Eric Foner

Download or read book Story of American Freedom written by Eric Foner and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1999-09-07 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freedom is the cornerstone of his sweeping narrative that focuses not only congressional debates and political treatises since the Revolution but how the fight for freedom took place on plantation and picket lines and in parlors and bedrooms.


A Summary View of the Rights of British America

A Summary View of the Rights of British America

Author: Thomas Jefferson

Publisher:

Published: 1774

Total Pages: 70

ISBN-13:

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Book Synopsis A Summary View of the Rights of British America by : Thomas Jefferson

Download or read book A Summary View of the Rights of British America written by Thomas Jefferson and published by . This book was released on 1774 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:


The Two Faces of American Freedom

The Two Faces of American Freedom

Author: Aziz Rana

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2014-04-07

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 0674266552

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The Two Faces of American Freedom boldly reinterprets the American political tradition from the colonial period to modern times, placing issues of race relations, immigration, and presidentialism in the context of shifting notions of empire and citizenship. Today, while the U.S. enjoys tremendous military and economic power, citizens are increasingly insulated from everyday decision-making. This was not always the case. America, Aziz Rana argues, began as a settler society grounded in an ideal of freedom as the exercise of continuous self-rule—one that joined direct political participation with economic independence. However, this vision of freedom was politically bound to the subordination of marginalized groups, especially slaves, Native Americans, and women. These practices of liberty and exclusion were not separate currents, but rather two sides of the same coin. However, at crucial moments, social movements sought to imagine freedom without either subordination or empire. By the mid-twentieth century, these efforts failed, resulting in the rise of hierarchical state and corporate institutions. This new framework presented national and economic security as society’s guiding commitments and nurtured a continual extension of America’s global reach. Rana envisions a democratic society that revives settler ideals, but combines them with meaningful inclusion for those currently at the margins of American life.


Book Synopsis The Two Faces of American Freedom by : Aziz Rana

Download or read book The Two Faces of American Freedom written by Aziz Rana and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-07 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Two Faces of American Freedom boldly reinterprets the American political tradition from the colonial period to modern times, placing issues of race relations, immigration, and presidentialism in the context of shifting notions of empire and citizenship. Today, while the U.S. enjoys tremendous military and economic power, citizens are increasingly insulated from everyday decision-making. This was not always the case. America, Aziz Rana argues, began as a settler society grounded in an ideal of freedom as the exercise of continuous self-rule—one that joined direct political participation with economic independence. However, this vision of freedom was politically bound to the subordination of marginalized groups, especially slaves, Native Americans, and women. These practices of liberty and exclusion were not separate currents, but rather two sides of the same coin. However, at crucial moments, social movements sought to imagine freedom without either subordination or empire. By the mid-twentieth century, these efforts failed, resulting in the rise of hierarchical state and corporate institutions. This new framework presented national and economic security as society’s guiding commitments and nurtured a continual extension of America’s global reach. Rana envisions a democratic society that revives settler ideals, but combines them with meaningful inclusion for those currently at the margins of American life.


In the Hands of the People

In the Hands of the People

Author: Jon Meacham

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2020-06-30

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 0593229320

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Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Jon Meacham offers a collection of inspiring words about how to be a good citizen, from Thomas Jefferson and others, and reminds us why our country’s founding principles are still so important today. Thomas Jefferson believed in the covenant between a government and its citizens, in both the government’s responsibilities to its people and also the people’s responsibility to the republic. In this illuminating book, a project of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, the #1 New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham presents selections from Jefferson’s writing on the subject, with an afterword by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed and comments on Jefferson’s ideas from others, including Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Frederick Douglass, Carl Sagan, and American presidents. This curated collection revitalizes how to see an individual’s role in the world, as it explores such Jeffersonian concepts as religious freedom, the importance of a free press, public education, participation in government, and others. Meacham writes, “In an hour of twenty-first-century division and partisanship, of declining trust in institutions and of widespread skepticism about the long-term viability of the American experiment, it is instructive to return to first principles. Not, to be sure, as an exercise in nostalgia or as a flight from the reality of our own time, but as an honest effort to see, as Jefferson wrote, what history may be able to tell us about the present and the future.”


Book Synopsis In the Hands of the People by : Jon Meacham

Download or read book In the Hands of the People written by Jon Meacham and published by Random House. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Jon Meacham offers a collection of inspiring words about how to be a good citizen, from Thomas Jefferson and others, and reminds us why our country’s founding principles are still so important today. Thomas Jefferson believed in the covenant between a government and its citizens, in both the government’s responsibilities to its people and also the people’s responsibility to the republic. In this illuminating book, a project of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, the #1 New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham presents selections from Jefferson’s writing on the subject, with an afterword by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed and comments on Jefferson’s ideas from others, including Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Frederick Douglass, Carl Sagan, and American presidents. This curated collection revitalizes how to see an individual’s role in the world, as it explores such Jeffersonian concepts as religious freedom, the importance of a free press, public education, participation in government, and others. Meacham writes, “In an hour of twenty-first-century division and partisanship, of declining trust in institutions and of widespread skepticism about the long-term viability of the American experiment, it is instructive to return to first principles. Not, to be sure, as an exercise in nostalgia or as a flight from the reality of our own time, but as an honest effort to see, as Jefferson wrote, what history may be able to tell us about the present and the future.”


Legacy of Hate: A Short History of Ethnic, Religious and Racial Prejudice in America

Legacy of Hate: A Short History of Ethnic, Religious and Racial Prejudice in America

Author: Philip Perlmutter

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-07-17

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 1317466217

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For all its foundation on the principles of religious freedom and human equality, American history contains numerous examples of bigotry and persecution of minorities. Now, author Philip Perlmutter lays out the history of prejudice in America in a brief, compact, and readable volume. Perlmutter begins with the arrival of white Europeans, moves through the eighteenth and industrially expanding nineteenth centuries; the explosion of immigration and its attendant problems in the twentieth century; and a fifth chapter explores how prejudice (racial, religious, and ethnic) has been institutionalized in the educational systems and laws. His final chapter covers the future of minority progress.


Book Synopsis Legacy of Hate: A Short History of Ethnic, Religious and Racial Prejudice in America by : Philip Perlmutter

Download or read book Legacy of Hate: A Short History of Ethnic, Religious and Racial Prejudice in America written by Philip Perlmutter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-17 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For all its foundation on the principles of religious freedom and human equality, American history contains numerous examples of bigotry and persecution of minorities. Now, author Philip Perlmutter lays out the history of prejudice in America in a brief, compact, and readable volume. Perlmutter begins with the arrival of white Europeans, moves through the eighteenth and industrially expanding nineteenth centuries; the explosion of immigration and its attendant problems in the twentieth century; and a fifth chapter explores how prejudice (racial, religious, and ethnic) has been institutionalized in the educational systems and laws. His final chapter covers the future of minority progress.


American Slavery, American Freedom

American Slavery, American Freedom

Author: Edmund S. Morgan

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2003-10-17

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 0393347516

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"Thoughtful, suggestive and highly readable."—New York Times Book Review In the American Revolution, Virginians were the most eloquent spokesmen for freedom and quality. George Washington led the Americans in battle against British oppression. Thomas Jefferson led them in declaring independence. Virginians drafted not only the Declaration but also the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; they were elected to the presidency of the United States under that Constitution for thirty-two of the first thirty-six years of its existence. They were all slaveholders. In the new preface Edmund S. Morgan writes: "Human relations among us still suffer from the former enslavement of a large portion of our predecessors. The freedom of the free, the growth of freedom experienced in the American Revolution depended more than we like to admit on the enslavement of more than 20 percent of us at that time. How republican freedom came to be supported, at least in large part, by its opposite, slavery, is the subject of this book. American Slavery, American Freedom is a study of the tragic contradiction at the core of America. Morgan finds the keys to this central paradox, "the marriage of slavery and freedom," in the people and the politics of the state that was both the birthplace of the Revolution and the largest slaveholding state in the country.


Book Synopsis American Slavery, American Freedom by : Edmund S. Morgan

Download or read book American Slavery, American Freedom written by Edmund S. Morgan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2003-10-17 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Thoughtful, suggestive and highly readable."—New York Times Book Review In the American Revolution, Virginians were the most eloquent spokesmen for freedom and quality. George Washington led the Americans in battle against British oppression. Thomas Jefferson led them in declaring independence. Virginians drafted not only the Declaration but also the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; they were elected to the presidency of the United States under that Constitution for thirty-two of the first thirty-six years of its existence. They were all slaveholders. In the new preface Edmund S. Morgan writes: "Human relations among us still suffer from the former enslavement of a large portion of our predecessors. The freedom of the free, the growth of freedom experienced in the American Revolution depended more than we like to admit on the enslavement of more than 20 percent of us at that time. How republican freedom came to be supported, at least in large part, by its opposite, slavery, is the subject of this book. American Slavery, American Freedom is a study of the tragic contradiction at the core of America. Morgan finds the keys to this central paradox, "the marriage of slavery and freedom," in the people and the politics of the state that was both the birthplace of the Revolution and the largest slaveholding state in the country.


Liberty of Conscience

Liberty of Conscience

Author: Martha Craven Nussbaum

Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)

Published: 2008-02-05

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 0465051642

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An analysis of America's commitment to religious liberty uses political history, philosophical ideas, and key constitutional cases to discuss its basis in six principles: equality, respect for conscience, liberty, accommodation of minorities, nonestablishment, and separation of church and state.


Book Synopsis Liberty of Conscience by : Martha Craven Nussbaum

Download or read book Liberty of Conscience written by Martha Craven Nussbaum and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2008-02-05 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of America's commitment to religious liberty uses political history, philosophical ideas, and key constitutional cases to discuss its basis in six principles: equality, respect for conscience, liberty, accommodation of minorities, nonestablishment, and separation of church and state.