Our Dear-Bought Liberty

Our Dear-Bought Liberty PDF Author: Michael D. Breidenbach
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067424723X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
How early American Catholics justified secularism and overcame suspicions of disloyalty, transforming ideas of religious liberty in the process. In colonial America, Catholics were presumed dangerous until proven loyal. Yet Catholics went on to sign the Declaration of Independence and helped to finalize the First Amendment to the Constitution. What explains this remarkable transformation? Michael Breidenbach shows how Catholic leaders emphasized their churchÕs own traditionsÑrather than Enlightenment liberalismÑto secure the religious liberty that enabled their incorporation in American life. Catholics responded to charges of disloyalty by denying papal infallibility and the popeÕs authority to intervene in civil affairs. Rome staunchly rejected such dissent, but reform-minded Catholics justified their stance by looking to conciliarism, an intellectual tradition rooted in medieval Catholic thought yet compatible with a republican view of temporal independence and church-state separation. Drawing on new archival material, Breidenbach finds that early American Catholic leaders, including Maryland founder Cecil Calvert and members of the prominent Carroll family, relied on the conciliarist tradition to help institute religious toleration, including the Maryland Toleration Act of 1649. The critical role of Catholics in establishing American churchÐstate separation enjoins us to revise not only our sense of who the American founders were, but also our understanding of the sources of secularism. ChurchÐstate separation in America, generally understood as the product of a Protestant-driven Enlightenment, was in key respects derived from Catholic thinking. Our Dear-Bought Liberty therefore offers a dramatic departure from received wisdom, suggesting that religious liberty in America was not bestowed by liberal consensus but partly defined through the ingenuity of a persecuted minority.

Our Dear-Bought Liberty

Our Dear-Bought Liberty PDF Author: Michael D. Breidenbach
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067424723X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book Here

Book Description
How early American Catholics justified secularism and overcame suspicions of disloyalty, transforming ideas of religious liberty in the process. In colonial America, Catholics were presumed dangerous until proven loyal. Yet Catholics went on to sign the Declaration of Independence and helped to finalize the First Amendment to the Constitution. What explains this remarkable transformation? Michael Breidenbach shows how Catholic leaders emphasized their churchÕs own traditionsÑrather than Enlightenment liberalismÑto secure the religious liberty that enabled their incorporation in American life. Catholics responded to charges of disloyalty by denying papal infallibility and the popeÕs authority to intervene in civil affairs. Rome staunchly rejected such dissent, but reform-minded Catholics justified their stance by looking to conciliarism, an intellectual tradition rooted in medieval Catholic thought yet compatible with a republican view of temporal independence and church-state separation. Drawing on new archival material, Breidenbach finds that early American Catholic leaders, including Maryland founder Cecil Calvert and members of the prominent Carroll family, relied on the conciliarist tradition to help institute religious toleration, including the Maryland Toleration Act of 1649. The critical role of Catholics in establishing American churchÐstate separation enjoins us to revise not only our sense of who the American founders were, but also our understanding of the sources of secularism. ChurchÐstate separation in America, generally understood as the product of a Protestant-driven Enlightenment, was in key respects derived from Catholic thinking. Our Dear-Bought Liberty therefore offers a dramatic departure from received wisdom, suggesting that religious liberty in America was not bestowed by liberal consensus but partly defined through the ingenuity of a persecuted minority.

The Urban Crucible

The Urban Crucible PDF Author: Gary B. Nash
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674041325
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
The Urban Crucible boldly reinterprets colonial life and the origins of the American Revolution. Through a century-long history of three seaport towns--Boston, New York, and Philadelphia--Gary Nash discovers subtle changes in social and political awareness and describes the coming of the revolution through popular collective action and challenges to rule by custom, law and divine will. A reordering of political power required a new consciousness to challenge the model of social relations inherited from the past and defended by higher classes. While retaining all the main points of analysis and interpretation, the author has reduced the full complement of statistics, sources, and technical data contained in the original edition to serve the needs of general readers and undergraduates.

A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders

A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders PDF Author: James Delbourgo
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674022997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
"The first book to situate early American experimental science in the context of a transatlantic public sphere, A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders offers a view of the origins of American science and the cultural meaning of the American Enlightenment."--BOOK JACKET.

Informed Power

Informed Power PDF Author: Alejandra Dubcovsky
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674660188
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Informed Power maps the intricate, intersecting channels of information exchange in the early American South, exploring how people in the colonial world came into possession of vital knowledge in a region that lacked a regular mail system or a printing press until the 1730s. Challenging the notion of early colonial America as an uninformed backwater, Alejandra Dubcovsky uncovers the ingenious ways its inhabitants acquired timely news through largely oral networks. Information circulated through the region via spies, scouts, traders, missionaries, and other ad hoc couriers—and by encounters of sheer chance with hunting parties, shipwrecked sailors, captured soldiers, or fugitive slaves. For many, content was often inseparable from the paths taken and the alliances involved in acquiring it. The different and innovative ways that Indians, Africans, and Europeans struggled to make sense of their world created communication networks that linked together peoples who otherwise shared no consensus of the physical and political boundaries shaping their lives. Exchanging information was not simply about having the most up-to-date news or the quickest messenger. It was a way of establishing and maintaining relationships, of articulating values and enforcing priorities—a process inextricably tied to the region’s social and geopolitical realities. At the heart of Dubcovsky’s study are important lessons about the nexus of information and power in the early American South.

Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul

Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul PDF Author: John M. Barry
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101554266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 635

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Book Description
A revelatory look at how Roger Williams shaped the nature of religion, political power, and individual rights in America. For four hundred years, Americans have wrestled with and fought over two concepts that define the nature of the nation: the proper relation between church and state and between a free individual and the state. These debates began with the extraordinary thought and struggles of Roger Williams, who had an unparalleled understanding of the conflict between a government that justified itself by "reason of state"-i.e. national security-and its perceived "will of God" and the "ancient rights and liberties" of individuals. This is a story of power, set against Puritan America and the English Civil War. Williams's interactions with King James, Francis Bacon, Oliver Cromwell, and his mentor Edward Coke set his course, but his fundamental ideas came to fruition in America, as Williams, though a Puritan, collided with John Winthrop's vision of his "City upon a Hill." Acclaimed historian John M. Barry explores the development of these fundamental ideas through the story of the man who was the first to link religious freedom to individual liberty, and who created in America the first government and society on earth informed by those beliefs. The story is essential to the continuing debate over how we define the role of religion and political power in modern American life.

Barbaric Traffic

Barbaric Traffic PDF Author: Philip GOULD
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674037855
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Eighteenth-century antislavery writers attacked the slave trade as "barbaric traffic"--a practice that would corrupt the mien and manners of Anglo-American culture to its core. Less concerned with slavery than with the slave trade in and of itself, these writings expressed a moral uncertainty about the nature of commercial capitalism. This is the argument Philip Gould advances in Barbaric Traffic. A major work of cultural criticism, the book constitutes a rethinking of the fundamental agenda of antislavery writing from pre-revolutionary America to the end of the British and American slave trades in 1808. Studying the rhetoric of various antislavery genres--from pamphlets, poetry, and novels to slave narratives and the literature of disease--Gould exposes the close relation between antislavery writings and commercial capitalism. By distinguishing between good commerce, or the importing of commodities that refined manners, and bad commerce, like the slave trade, the literature offered both a critique and an outline of acceptable forms of commercial capitalism. A challenge to the premise that objections to the slave trade were rooted in modern laissez-faire capitalism, Gould's work revises--and expands--our understanding of antislavery literature as a form of cultural criticism in its own right. Table of Contents: Introduction 1. The Commercial Jeremiad 2. The Poetics of Antislavery 3. American Slaves in North Africa 4. Liberty, Slavery, and Black Atlantic Autobiography 5. Yellow Fever and the Black Market Epilogue Notes Index This is a very important book which convincingly rethinks the fundamental agenda of Anglo-American anti-slavery literature from 1775 to 1808 (the end of the British slave trade). This is no small feat. Anti-slavery texts, Gould argues, offered less a critique of slavery than a critique of the slave trade. By distinguishing between good commerce (the importing of commodities that refined the manners) and bad commerce (the importation of slaves), these texts both critiqued commercial capitalism and outlined its acceptable and necessary forms. Thus anti-slavery texts endlessly deferred the issue of abolition in order to serve as a site of moral uncertainty about whether commercial capitalism would debase or civilize modern society. Sin is less feared than the depravity of manners which could corrupt Anglo-American culture at its core. Because virtuous and vicious commerce turned on the nature and regulation of passions, much was at stake. Closely attending to a vast number of transatlantic texts, Gould defines and demonstrates a "commercial aesthetic" that inflects the language of race and sentiments with issues of economic and social change. Gould's next move is to argue with reference to what he calls "the commercial jeremiad" that the very ideological discourse of civilization and savagery is rooted in trade. The concept of race is largely produced by this oppositional discourse rather than founded on its prior existence. --Jay Fliegelman, author of Prodigals and Pilgrims and Declaring Independence This is a very important book with compelling and new insights throughout. It is the first book to examine such a wide range of both literary and historical sources on 18th century Anglo-American antislavery, and it does so with superb textual readings. --John Stauffer, author of The Black Hearts of Men and John Brown and the Coming of the Civil War Extensively researched and carefully argued, Barbaric Traffic demonstrates an admirably sure-footed, clearsighted awareness of how transatlantic Enlightenment discourses of aesthetics, commerce, liberty, race, religion, and sentiment pursue distinct logics of their own yet cannot be pried apart. --Lawrence Buell, author of Emerson and Writing for an Endangered World Barbaric Traffic: Commerce and Antislavery in the 18th Century Atlantic World appears as a welcome addition to debates about slavery, sentimentality, and culture in American studies. Its readings are meticulous, historically grounded, and theoretically informed. The writing is clear and persuasive. Gould has an original and sometimes really stunning sense of the relation between ethics and manners in eighteenth century interpretations of capitalism and slavery exposed so trenchantly by earlier critics like Eric Williams. In particular, he is very good at deciphering what he calls "the ideological movement from theology to ethics" that appears through debates about slavery and commerce in the period. Gould presents excellent interpretations of the Christian sentiments of Phillis Wheatley, of the under-interpreted political context of Slaves of Algiers, of the expose of the slave ship by the Philadelphian Mathew Carey, and of the racialized ambivalence attached to the yellow fever panic of 1793 in Philadelphia. Few critics writing today show the range of concerns and depth of research that appears in Gould's work, which reminds me of the historical depth and clarity of David Brion Davis, and also of the commitment to paradigm shifts of Thomas Haskell. In short, Philip Gould is one of the most thoughtful and engaged critics working in American literature and culture today. --Shirley Samuels, author of Romances of the Republic

Latter-day Liberty

Latter-day Liberty PDF Author: Connor Boyack
Publisher: Connor Boyack
ISBN: 159955934X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Individual liberty is a fundamental aspect of the good news of the gospel. But what is liberty exactly, and what role does it play in our lives? Connor Boyack explores these questions and much more in this detailed analysis of historical developments, secular information, and scriptural insights. Make the most of your freedom through the joys of the gospel with this timely book.

Facing East from Indian Country

Facing East from Indian Country PDF Author: Daniel K. Richter
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674042727
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
In the beginning, North America was Indian country. But only in the beginning. After the opening act of the great national drama, Native Americans yielded to the westward rush of European settlers. Or so the story usually goes. Yet, for three centuries after Columbus, Native people controlled most of eastern North America and profoundly shaped its destiny. In Facing East from Indian Country, Daniel K. Richter keeps Native people center-stage throughout the story of the origins of the United States. Viewed from Indian country, the sixteenth century was an era in which Native people discovered Europeans and struggled to make sense of a new world. Well into the seventeenth century, the most profound challenges to Indian life came less from the arrival of a relative handful of European colonists than from the biological, economic, and environmental forces the newcomers unleashed. Drawing upon their own traditions, Indian communities reinvented themselves and carved out a place in a world dominated by transatlantic European empires. In 1776, however, when some of Britain's colonists rebelled against that imperial world, they overturned the system that had made Euro-American and Native coexistence possible. Eastern North America only ceased to be an Indian country because the revolutionaries denied the continent's first peoples a place in the nation they were creating. In rediscovering early America as Indian country, Richter employs the historian's craft to challenge cherished assumptions about times and places we thought we knew well, revealing Native American experiences at the core of the nation's birth and identity.

The Consent of the Governed

The Consent of the Governed PDF Author: Gillian Brown
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674002982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
What made the United States what it is began long before a shot was fired at a redcoat in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1775. The theories of reading developed by John Locke were the means by which a revolutionary attitude toward authority was disseminated throughout the British colonies in North America.

Free to Believe

Free to Believe PDF Author: Luke Goodrich
Publisher: Multnomah
ISBN: 0525652906
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
A leading religious freedom attorney, the veteran of several Supreme Court battles, helps people of faith understand religious liberty in our rapidly changing culture—why it matters, how it is threatened, and how to respond with confidence and grace. WINNER OF THE CHRISTIAN BOOK AWARD® • THE GOSPEL COALITION'S BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR, PUBLIC THEOLOGY & CURRENT EVENTS • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY WORLD MAGAZINE Many Americans feel like their religious freedom is under attack. They see the culture changing around them, and they fear that their beliefs will soon be punished as a form of bigotry. Others think these fears are overblown and say Christians should stop complaining about imaginary persecution. In Free to Believe leading religious freedom attorney Luke Goodrich challenges both sides of this debate, offering a fresh perspective on the most controversial religious freedom conflicts today. With penetrating insights on gay rights, abortion rights, Islam, and the public square, Goodrich argues that threats to religious freedom are real—but they might not be quite what you think. As a lawyer at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Goodrich has won several historic Supreme Court victories for clients such as the Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby. Combining frontline experience with faithful attention to Scripture, Goodrich shows why religious freedom matters, how it is threatened, and how to protect it. The result is a groundbreaking book full of clear insight, practical wisdom, and refreshing hope for all people of faith.