Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers by Brooke Allen

Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers by Brooke Allen

In her lively refutation of modern claims about America's religious origins, Brooke Allen looks back at the late eighteenth century and shows decisively that the United States was founded not on Christian principles at all but on Enlightenment ideas. Moral Minority presents a powerful case that the unique legal framework the Founding Fathers created was designed according to the humanist ideals of Enlightenment thinkers: God entered the picture only as a very minor player, and Jesus Christ was conspicuous by his absence. The guiding spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, Ms. Allen explains, was not Jesus Christ but John Locke. In direct and accessible prose, she provides fascinating chapters on the religious lives of the six men she considers the key Founding Fathers: Franklin, Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton. Far from being the conventional pious Christians we too often imagine, these men were skeptical intellectuals, in some cases not even Christians at all. Moral Minority presents unforgettable images of our iconic founders: Jefferson taking a razor to the Bible and cutting out every miraculous and supernatural occurrence; Washington rewriting speeches others had crafted for him, so as to omit all references to Jesus Christ; Franklin and Adams confiding their doubts about Christ's divinity; Madison expressing deep disapproval over the appointment of chaplains to Congress and the armed forces, and of what we would now call faith-based initiatives. Enlivened by generous portions of the founders' own incomparable prose, Moral Minority makes an impassioned and scintillating contribution to the ongoing debate--more heated now than ever before--over the separation of church and state and the role (or lack thereof) of religion in government.

Brooke Allen is a writer and critic whose work appears frequently in the New York Times Book Review, the Atlantic Monthly, the New Criterion, the Hudson Review, and the New Leader. She has also written Artistic License, and won the 2003 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Ms. Allen lives with her husband and two children in Brooklyn, New York.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9781435121225
ISBN 10	1435121228
Titel	Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers
Autor	Brooke Allen
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Hardback
Verlag	Ivan R. Dee
Erscheinungsjahr	1875-01-01
Seitenanzahl	0
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar