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Bezig met laden... Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (2004)door Susan Jacoby
Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Meh. Like a college survey textbook. In fact, the back cover reviews actually reference this as a good thing. ( ) If anything, this book is a bit dated (it was published in 2004), but the issues the author details about debates regarding the separation of church and state are still relevant today. As someone who often aligns more with a secular approach to most issues, this book is refreshing and inspiring in its journey through the secular history of the United States and its focus on the well-known (like Jefferson and Lincoln) and the less well-know (like Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll) as a very American story of secularism emerges. This volume is by no means a definitive history and I would argue several topics and figures deserve a more thorough examination, but it is a example of applying a secular lens on American history and through that, telling a new story about the country's past.
Ardent and insightful, Ms. Jacoby seeks to rescue a proud tradition from the indifference of posterity. The great virtue of Susan Jacoby’s book is that it succeeds so well in its own original intent: showing that secularism, agnosticism and atheism are as American as cherry pie. Indeed, this is the first and only country to adopt a Constitution that specifically excludes all reference to a higher power... In lucid and witty prose, Jacoby has uncovered the hidden history of secular America, and awarded it a large share of credit in every movement for social and political reform... If the book has a fault, it is the near-axiomatic identification of the secular cause with the liberal one. Susan Jacoby has what might be called ACLU politics. To read her, you would not know that two of the most prominent intellectual gurus of American conservatism — Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss — were both determined nonbelievers. H.L. Mencken, who if not exactly a conservative was certainly not a liberal, had vast contempt for religion but is cited only briefly here for his role in the Scopes trial in Tennessee.
"Jacoby accomplishes her task with clarity, thoroughness, and an engaging passion." -Los Angeles Times Book Review At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before,Freethinkers offers a powerful defense of the secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock of human reason. In impassioned, elegant prose, celebrated author Susan Jacoby traces more than two hundred years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution. Moving from nineteenth-century abolitionism and suffragism through the twentieth century's civil liberties, civil rights, and feminist movements,Freethinkers illuminates the neglected achievements of secularists who, allied with tolerant believers, have led the battle for reform in the past and today. Rich with such iconic figures as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, and the once-famous Robert Green Ingersoll, Freethinkers restores to history the passionate humanists who struggled against those who would undermine the combination of secular government and religious liberty that is the glory of the American system. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)211.4097Religions Natural Theology and Secularism Deism and Atheism Free ThoughtLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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