The Bible in American Law and Politics

The Bible in American Law and Politics PDF Author: John R. Vile
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538141671
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 679

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Book Description
While scholars increasingly recognize the importance of religion throughout American history, The Bible in American Law and Politics is the first reference book to focus on the key role that the Bible has played in American public life. In considering revolting from Great Britain, Americans contemplated whether this was consistent with scripture. Americans subsequently sought to apply Biblical passages to such issues as slavery, women’s rights, national alcoholic prohibition, issues of war and peace, and the like. American presidents continue to take their oath on the Bible. Some of America’s greatest speeches, for example, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural and William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech, have been grounded on Biblical texts or analogies. Today, Americans continue to cite the Bible for positions as diverse as LGBTQ rights, abortion, immigration, welfare, health care, and other contemporary issues. By providing essays on key speeches, books, documents, legal decisions, and other writings throughout American history that have sought to buttress arguments through citations to Scriptures or to Biblical figures, John Vile provides an indispensable guide for scholars and students in religion, American history, law, and political science to understand how Americans throughout its history have interpreted and applied the Bible to legal and political issues.

The Bible in American Law and Politics

The Bible in American Law and Politics PDF Author: John R. Vile
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538141671
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 679

Get Book Here

Book Description
While scholars increasingly recognize the importance of religion throughout American history, The Bible in American Law and Politics is the first reference book to focus on the key role that the Bible has played in American public life. In considering revolting from Great Britain, Americans contemplated whether this was consistent with scripture. Americans subsequently sought to apply Biblical passages to such issues as slavery, women’s rights, national alcoholic prohibition, issues of war and peace, and the like. American presidents continue to take their oath on the Bible. Some of America’s greatest speeches, for example, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural and William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech, have been grounded on Biblical texts or analogies. Today, Americans continue to cite the Bible for positions as diverse as LGBTQ rights, abortion, immigration, welfare, health care, and other contemporary issues. By providing essays on key speeches, books, documents, legal decisions, and other writings throughout American history that have sought to buttress arguments through citations to Scriptures or to Biblical figures, John Vile provides an indispensable guide for scholars and students in religion, American history, law, and political science to understand how Americans throughout its history have interpreted and applied the Bible to legal and political issues.

The Bible in American Law, Politics, and Political Rhetoric

The Bible in American Law, Politics, and Political Rhetoric PDF Author: James Turner Johnson
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description


The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America

The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America PDF Author: Paul C. Gutjahr
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190258845
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 737

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Book Description
Early Americans have long been considered "A People of the Book" Because the nickname was coined primarily to invoke close associations between Americans and the Bible, it is easy to overlook the central fact that it was a book-not a geographic location, a monarch, or even a shared language-that has served as a cornerstone in countless investigations into the formation and fragmentation of early American culture. Few books can lay claim to such powers of civilization-altering influence. Among those which can are sacred books, and for Americans principal among such books stands the Bible. This Handbook is designed to address a noticeable void in resources focused on analyzing the Bible in America in various historical moments and in relationship to specific institutions and cultural expressions. It takes seriously the fact that the Bible is both a physical object that has exercised considerable totemic power, as well as a text with a powerful intellectual design that has inspired everything from national religious and educational practices to a wide spectrum of artistic endeavors to our nation's politics and foreign policy. This Handbook brings together a number of established scholars, as well as younger scholars on the rise, to provide a scholarly overview--rich with bibliographic resources--to those interested in the Bible's role in American cultural formation.

Politics - According to the Bible

Politics - According to the Bible PDF Author: Wayne A. Grudem
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0310413583
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 626

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Book Description
Should Christians be involved in political issues? This comprehensive and readable book presents a political philosophy from the perspective that the Gospel pertains to all of life, including politics. Politics—According to the Bible is an in-depth analysis of conservative and liberal plans to do good for the nation, evaluated in light of the Bible and common sense. Evangelical Bible professor, and author of the bestselling book Systematic Theology, Wayne Grudem unpacks and rejects five common views about Christian influence on politics: "compel religion," "exclude religion," "all government is demonic," "do evangelism, not politics," and "do politics, not evangelism." Instead, he defends a position of "significant Christian influence on government" and explains the Bible's teachings about the purpose of civil government and the characteristics of good or bad governments. Grudem provides a thoughtful analysis of over fifty specific and current political issues dealing with: The protection of life. Marriage, the family, and children. Economic issues and taxation. The environment. National defense Relationships to other nations. Freedom of speech and religion. Quotas. And special interests. Throughout this book, he makes frequent application to the current policies of the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States, but the principles discussed here are relevant for any nation.

Law and the Bible

Law and the Bible PDF Author: Robert F. Cochran
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830825738
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The Bible is full of law. Yet too often, Christians either pick and choose verses out of context to bolster existing positions, or assume that any moral judgment the Bible expresses should become the law of the land. Law and the Bible asks: What inspired light does the Bible shed on Christians’ participation in contemporary legal systems? It concludes that more often than not the Bible overturns our faulty assumptions and skewed commitments rather than bolsters them. In the process, God gives us greater insight into what all of life, including law, should be. Each chapter is cowritten by a legal professional and a theologian, and focuses on a key aspect of the biblical witness concerning civil or positive law--that is, law that human societies create to order their communities, implementing and enforcing it through civil government. A foundational text for legal professionals, law and prelaw students, and all who want to think in a faithfully Christian way about law and their relationship to it.

God’s Law and Order

God’s Law and Order PDF Author: Aaron Griffith
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674238788
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Winner of a Christianity Today Book Award An incisive look at how evangelical Christians shaped—and were shaped by—the American criminal justice system. America incarcerates on a massive scale. Despite recent reforms, the United States locks up large numbers of people—disproportionately poor and nonwhite—for long periods and offers little opportunity for restoration. Aaron Griffith reveals a key component in the origins of American mass incarceration: evangelical Christianity. Evangelicals in the postwar era made crime concern a major religious issue and found new platforms for shaping public life through punitive politics. Religious leaders like Billy Graham and David Wilkerson mobilized fears of lawbreaking and concern for offenders to sharpen appeals for Christian conversion, setting the stage for evangelicals who began advocating tough-on-crime politics in the 1960s. Building on religious campaigns for public safety earlier in the twentieth century, some preachers and politicians pushed for “law and order,” urging support for harsh sentences and expanded policing. Other evangelicals saw crime as a missionary opportunity, launching innovative ministries that reshaped the practice of religion in prisons. From the 1980s on, evangelicals were instrumental in popularizing criminal justice reform, making it a central cause in the compassionate conservative movement. At every stage in their work, evangelicals framed their efforts as colorblind, which only masked racial inequality in incarceration and delayed real change. Today evangelicals play an ambiguous role in reform, pressing for reduced imprisonment while backing law-and-order politicians. God’s Law and Order shows that we cannot understand the criminal justice system without accounting for evangelicalism’s impact on its historical development.

Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers

Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers PDF Author: Daniel L. Dreisbach
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199987939
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
No book was more accessible or familiar to the American founders than the Bible, and no book was more frequently alluded to or quoted from in the political discourse of the age. How and for what purposes did the founding generation use the Bible? How did the Bible influence their political culture? Shedding new light on some of the most familiar rhetoric of the founding era, Daniel Dreisbach analyzes the founders' diverse use of scripture, ranging from the literary to the theological. He shows that they looked to the Bible for insights on human nature, civic virtue, political authority, and the rights and duties of citizens, as well as for political and legal models to emulate. They quoted scripture to authorize civil resistance, to invoke divine blessings for righteous nations, and to provide the language of liberty that would be appropriated by patriotic Americans. Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers broaches the perennial question of whether the American founding was, to some extent, informed by religious--specifically Christian--ideas. In the sense that the founding generation were members of a biblically literate society that placed the Bible at the center of culture and discourse, the answer to that question is clearly "yes." Ignoring the Bible's influence on the founders, Dreisbach warns, produces a distorted image of the American political experiment, and of the concept of self-government on which America is built.

The Bible in American Law, Politics, And Political Rhetoric

The Bible in American Law, Politics, And Political Rhetoric PDF Author: James Turner Johnson
Publisher: SBL Press
ISBN: 9781589832329
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
One of six titles in The Bible in American Culture series published to celebrate the Society of Biblical Literature's centennial, this volume explores the intersection of politics and religion from colonial era through the 1950s. Contributors focus on constitutional law, economics, community, and the development of political realism in relationship to the Bible. Each book in the series provides key information for anyone studying the interplay of the Bible and American culture from the foundation of the United States through the mid- to later twentieth century.

The Bible in American Law, Politics, and Political Rhetoric

The Bible in American Law, Politics, and Political Rhetoric PDF Author: James Turner Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America

The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America PDF Author: Paul Gutjahr
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190684836
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 737

Get Book Here

Book Description
Early Americans have long been considered "A People of the Book" Because the nickname was coined primarily to invoke close associations between Americans and the Bible, it is easy to overlook the central fact that it was a book-not a geographic location, a monarch, or even a shared language-that has served as a cornerstone in countless investigations into the formation and fragmentation of early American culture. Few books can lay claim to such powers of civilization-altering influence. Among those which can are sacred books, and for Americans principal among such books stands the Bible. This Handbook is designed to address a noticeable void in resources focused on analyzing the Bible in America in various historical moments and in relationship to specific institutions and cultural expressions. It takes seriously the fact that the Bible is both a physical object that has exercised considerable totemic power, as well as a text with a powerful intellectual design that has inspired everything from national religious and educational practices to a wide spectrum of artistic endeavors to our nation's politics and foreign policy. This Handbook brings together a number of established scholars, as well as younger scholars on the rise, to provide a scholarly overview--rich with bibliographic resources--to those interested in the Bible's role in American cultural formation.