Freedom and Religion in the Nineteenth Century

Freedom and Religion in the Nineteenth Century PDF Author: Richard J. Helmstadter
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804730877
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
The subject of religious liberty in the nineteenth century has been defined by a liberal narrative that has prevailed since Mill and Macaulay to Trevelyan and Commager, to name only a few philosophers and historians who wrote in English. Underlying this narrative is a noble dream--liberty for every person, guaranteed by democratic states that promote social progress though not interfering with those broadly defined areas of life, including religion, that are properly the preserve of free individuals. At the end of the twentieth century, however, it becomes clear that religious liberty requires a more comprehensive, subtle, and complex definition than the liberal tradition affords, one that confronts such questions as gender, ethnicity, and the distinction between individual and corporate liberty. None of the authors in this volume finds the familiar liberal narrative an adequate interpretive context for understanding his particular subject. Some address the liberal tradition directly and propose modified versions; others approach it implicitly. All revise it, and all revise in ways that echo across the chapters. The topics covered are religious liberty in early America (Nathan O. Hatch), science and religious freedom (Frank M. Turner), the conflicting ideas of religious freedom in early Victorian England (J. P. Ellens), the arguments over theological innovation in the England of the 1860’s (R. K. Webb), European Jews and the limits of religious freedom (David C. Itzkowitz), restrictions and controls on the practice of religion in Bismarck’s Germany (Ronald J. Ross), the Catholic Church in nineteenth-century Europe (Raymond Grew), religious liberty in France, 1787-1908 (C. T. McIntyre), clericalism and anticlericalism in Chile, 1820-1920 (Simon Collier), and religion and imperialism in nineteenth-century Britain (Jeffrey Cox).

Freedom and Religion in the Nineteenth Century

Freedom and Religion in the Nineteenth Century PDF Author: Richard J. Helmstadter
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804730877
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

Get Book Here

Book Description
The subject of religious liberty in the nineteenth century has been defined by a liberal narrative that has prevailed since Mill and Macaulay to Trevelyan and Commager, to name only a few philosophers and historians who wrote in English. Underlying this narrative is a noble dream--liberty for every person, guaranteed by democratic states that promote social progress though not interfering with those broadly defined areas of life, including religion, that are properly the preserve of free individuals. At the end of the twentieth century, however, it becomes clear that religious liberty requires a more comprehensive, subtle, and complex definition than the liberal tradition affords, one that confronts such questions as gender, ethnicity, and the distinction between individual and corporate liberty. None of the authors in this volume finds the familiar liberal narrative an adequate interpretive context for understanding his particular subject. Some address the liberal tradition directly and propose modified versions; others approach it implicitly. All revise it, and all revise in ways that echo across the chapters. The topics covered are religious liberty in early America (Nathan O. Hatch), science and religious freedom (Frank M. Turner), the conflicting ideas of religious freedom in early Victorian England (J. P. Ellens), the arguments over theological innovation in the England of the 1860’s (R. K. Webb), European Jews and the limits of religious freedom (David C. Itzkowitz), restrictions and controls on the practice of religion in Bismarck’s Germany (Ronald J. Ross), the Catholic Church in nineteenth-century Europe (Raymond Grew), religious liberty in France, 1787-1908 (C. T. McIntyre), clericalism and anticlericalism in Chile, 1820-1920 (Simon Collier), and religion and imperialism in nineteenth-century Britain (Jeffrey Cox).

The Myth of American Religious Freedom

The Myth of American Religious Freedom PDF Author: David Sehat
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199793115
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
In the battles over religion and politics in America, both liberals and conservatives often appeal to history. Liberals claim that the Founders separated church and state. But for much of American history, David Sehat writes, Protestant Christianity was intimately intertwined with the state. Yet the past was not the Christian utopia that conservatives imagine either. Instead, a Protestant moral establishment prevailed, using government power to punish free thinkers and religious dissidents. In The Myth of American Religious Freedom, Sehat provides an eye-opening history of religion in public life, overturning our most cherished myths. Originally, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government, which had limited authority. The Protestant moral establishment ruled on the state level. Using moral laws to uphold religious power, religious partisans enforced a moral and religious orthodoxy against Catholics, Jews, Mormons, agnostics, and others. Not until 1940 did the U.S. Supreme Court extend the First Amendment to the states. As the Supreme Court began to dismantle the connections between religion and government, Sehat argues, religious conservatives mobilized to maintain their power and began the culture wars of the last fifty years. To trace the rise and fall of this Protestant establishment, Sehat focuses on a series of dissenters--abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, socialist Eugene V. Debs, and many others. Shattering myths held by both the left and right, David Sehat forces us to rethink some of our most deeply held beliefs. By showing the bad history used on both sides, he denies partisans a safe refuge with the Founders.

Conscience and Conversion

Conscience and Conversion PDF Author: Thomas Kselman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030023564X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Religious liberty is usually examined within a larger discussion of church-state relations, but Thomas Kselman looks at several individuals in Restoration France whose high-profile conversions fascinated their contemporaries. Exploring their reasons and the repercussions they faced, Kselman demonstrates how this expanded sense of liberty informs our secular age.

Religion in Nineteenth Century America

Religion in Nineteenth Century America PDF Author: Grant Wacker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Written from the perspective of the various denominations that thrived in the 19th century, this comprehensive survey of the middle period in America's religious past actually starts a little earlier, in the 1780s. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, the citizens of the newly-minted republic had to cope with more than the havoc wreaked on churches and denominations by the war. They also tasted for the first time the effects of two novel ideas incorporated in the Constitution and the First Amendment: the separation of church and state and the freedom to practice any religion. Grant Wacker takes readers on a lively tour of the numerous religions and the major historical challenges--from the Civil War and westward expansion to immigration and the Industrial Revolution--that defined the century. The narrative focuses on the rapid growth of evangelical Protestants, in denominations such as Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists, and their competition for dominance with new immigrants' religions such as Catholicism and Judaism. The author discusses issues ranging from temperance to Sunday schools and introduces the personalities--sometimes colorful, sometimes saintly, and often both--of the men and women who shaped American religion in the 19th century, including Methodist bishop Francis Asbury, ex-slave Sojourner Truth, Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, and evangelist Dwight L. Moody. Religion in American Life explores the evolution, character, and dynamics of organized religion in America from 1500 to the present day. Written by distinguished religious historians, these books weave together the varying stories that compose the religious fabric of the United States, from Puritanism to alternative religious practices. Primary source material coupled with handsome illustrations and lucid text make these books essential in any exploration of America's diverse nature. Each book includes a chronology, suggestions for further reading, and index.

Separation of Church and State

Separation of Church and State PDF Author: Philip HAMBURGER
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674038185
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
In a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom, Philip Hamburger argues that the separation of church and state has no historical foundation in the First Amendment. The detailed evidence assembled here shows that eighteenth-century Americans almost never invoked this principle. Although Thomas Jefferson and others retrospectively claimed that the First Amendment separated church and state, separation became part of American constitutional law only much later. Hamburger shows that separation became a constitutional freedom largely through fear and prejudice. Jefferson supported separation out of hostility to the Federalist clergy of New England. Nativist Protestants (ranging from nineteenth-century Know Nothings to twentieth-century members of the K.K.K.) adopted the principle of separation to restrict the role of Catholics in public life. Gradually, these Protestants were joined by theologically liberal, anti-Christian secularists, who hoped that separation would limit Christianity and all other distinct religions. Eventually, a wide range of men and women called for separation. Almost all of these Americans feared ecclesiastical authority, particularly that of the Catholic Church, and, in response to their fears, they increasingly perceived religious liberty to require a separation of church from state. American religious liberty was thus redefined and even transformed. In the process, the First Amendment was often used as an instrument of intolerance and discrimination.

Secularists, Religion and Government in Nineteenth-Century America

Secularists, Religion and Government in Nineteenth-Century America PDF Author: Timothy Verhoeven
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030028771
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
This book shows how, through a series of fierce battles over Sabbath laws, legislative chaplains, Bible-reading in public schools and other flashpoints, nineteenth-century secularists mounted a powerful case for a separation of religion and government. Among their diverse ranks were religious skeptics, liberal Protestants, members of minority faiths, labor reformers and defenders of slavery. Drawing on popular petitions to Congress, a neglected historical source, the book explores how this secularist mobilization gathered energy at the grassroots level. The nineteenth century is usually seen as the golden age of an informal Protestant establishment. Timothy Verhoeven demonstrates that, far from being crushed by an evangelical juggernaut, secularists harnessed a range of cultural forces—the legacy of the Revolutionary founders, hostility to Catholicism, a belief in national exceptionalism and more—to argue that the United States was not a Christian nation, branding their opponents as fanatics who threatened both democratic liberties as well as true religion.

When Slavery Was Called Freedom

When Slavery Was Called Freedom PDF Author: John Patrick Daly
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813158516
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
When Slavery Was Called Freedom uncovers the cultural and ideological bonds linking the combatants in the Civil War era and boldly reinterprets the intellectual foundations of secession. John Patrick Daly dissects the evangelical defense of slavery at the heart of the nineteenth century's sectional crisis. He brings a new understanding to the role of religion in the Old South and the ways in which religion was used in the Confederacy. Southern evangelicals argued that their unique region was destined for greatness, and their rhetoric gave expression and a degree of coherence to the grassroots assumptions of the South. The North and South shared assumptions about freedom, prosperity, and morality. For a hundred years after the Civil War, politicians and historians emphasized the South's alleged departures from national ideals. Recent studies have concluded, however, that the South was firmly rooted in mainstream moral, intellectual, and socio-economic developments and sought to compete with the North in a contemporary spirit. Daly argues that antislavery and proslavery emerged from the same evangelical roots; both Northerners and Southerners interpreted the Bible and Christian moral dictates in light of individualism and free market economics. When the abolitionist's moral critique of slavery arose after 1830, Southern evangelicals answered the charges with the strident self-assurance of recent converts. They went on to articulate how slavery fit into the "genius of the American system" and how slavery was only right as part of that system.

Religion in American Life

Religion in American Life PDF Author: Jon Butler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199913293
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 573

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Book Description
"Quite ambitious, tracing religion in the United States from European colonization up to the 21st century.... The writing is strong throughout."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "One can hardly do better than Religion in American Life.... A good read, especially for the uninitiated. The initiated might also read it for its felicity of narrative and the moments of illumination that fine scholars can inject even into stories we have all heard before. Read it."--Church History This new edition of Religion in American Life, written by three of the country's most eminent historians of religion, offers a superb overview that spans four centuries, illuminating the rich spiritual heritage central to nearly every event in our nation's history. Beginning with the state of religious affairs in both the Old and New Worlds on the eve of colonization and continuing through to the present, the book covers all the major American religious groups, from Protestants, Jews, and Catholics to Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Buddhists, and New Age believers. Revised and updated, the book includes expanded treatment of religion during the Great Depression, of the religious influences on the civil rights movement, and of utopian groups in the 19th century, and it now covers the role of religion during the 2008 presidential election, observing how completely religion has entered American politics.

We Have a Religion

We Have a Religion PDF Author: Tisa Joy Wenger
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807832626
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
For Native Americans, religious freedom has been an elusive goal. From nineteenth-century bans on indigenous ceremonial practices to twenty-first-century legal battles over sacred lands, peyote use, and hunting practices, the U.S. government has often act

Constructing Nineteenth-Century Religion

Constructing Nineteenth-Century Religion PDF Author: Joshua King
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780814255292
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Examines the ways in which religion was constructed as a category and region of experience in nineteenth-century literature and culture.