Download Free American Heretics Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online American Heretics and write the review.

A journey through American history that reveals an unsettling pattern of religious intolerance, from colonial anti-Quaker sentiment to modern-day Islamophobia
A penetrating account of the religious critics of American liberalism, pluralism, and democracy—from the Revolution until today “A chilling consideration of persistent mutations of American thought still threatening our pluralist democracy.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) The conversation about the proper role of religion in American public life often revolves around what kind of polity the Founders of the United States envisioned. Advocates of a “Christian America” claim that the Framers intended a nation whose political values and institutions were shaped by Christianity; secularists argue that they designed an enlightened republic where church and state were kept separate. Both sides appeal to the Founding to justify their beliefs about the kind of nation the United States was meant to be or should become. In this book, Jerome E. Copulsky complicates this ongoing public argument by examining a collection of thinkers who, on religious grounds, considered the nation’s political ideas illegitimate, its institutions flawed, and its church‑state arrangement defective. Beholden to visions of cosmic order and social hierarchy, rejecting the increasing pluralism and secularism of American society, they predicted the collapse of an unrighteous nation and the emergence of a new Christian commonwealth in its stead. By engaging their challenges and interpreting their visions we can better appreciate the perennial temptations of religious illiberalism—as well as the virtues and fragilities of America’s liberal democracy.
A penetrating account of the religious critics of American liberalism, pluralism, and democracy--from the Revolution until today "A chilling consideration of persistent mutations of American thought still threatening our pluralist democracy."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) The conversation about the proper role of religion in American public life often revolves around what kind of polity the Founders of the United States envisioned. Advocates of a "Christian America" claim that the Framers intended a nation whose political values and institutions were shaped by Christianity; secularists argue that they designed an enlightened republic where church and state were kept separate. Both sides appeal to the Founding to justify their beliefs about the kind of nation the United States was meant to be or should become. In this book, Jerome E. Copulsky complicates this ongoing public argument by examining a collection of thinkers who, on religious grounds, considered the nation's political ideas illegitimate, its institutions flawed, and its church-state arrangement defective. Beholden to visions of cosmic order and social hierarchy, rejecting the increasing pluralism and secularism of American society, they predicted the collapse of an unrighteous nation and the emergence of a new Christian commonwealth in its stead. By engaging their challenges and interpreting their visions we can better appreciate the perennial temptations of religious illiberalism--as well as the virtues and fragilities of America's liberal democracy.
Traces the decline of Christianity in America since the 1950s, posing controversial arguments about the role of heresy in the nation's downfall while calling for a revival of traditional Christian practices.
Theodore Parker (1810-1860) was a powerful preacher who rejected the authority of the Bible and of Jesus, a brilliant scholar who became a popular agitator for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights, and a political theorist who defined democracy as "government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people--words that inspired Abraham Lincoln. Parker had more influence than anyone except Ralph Waldo Emerson in shaping Transcendentalism in America. In American Heretic, Dean Grodzins offers a compelling account of the remarkable first phase of Parker's career, when this complex man--charismatic yet awkward, brave yet insecure--rose from poverty and obscurity to fame and notoriety as a Transcendentalist prophet. Grodzins reveals hitherto hidden facets of Parker's life, including his love for a woman who was not his wife, and presents fresh perspectives on Transcendentalism. Grodzins explores Transcendentalism's religious roots, shows the profound religious and political issues at stake in the "Transcendentalist controversy," and offers new insights into Parker's Transcendentalist colleagues, including Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott. He traces, too, the intellectual origins of Parker's epochal definition of democracy as government of, by, and for the people. The manuscript of this book was awarded the Allan Nevins Prize by the Society of American Historians.
This new edition includes over 650 mordant definitions by Bufe—twice as many as in the original edition—and 40 illustrations by San Francisco artist and filmmaker J. R. Swanson. The definitions skewer such targets as religion, the "right to life" movement, capitalism, marxism, the IRS, politicians of all stripes, and common euphemisms, as well as male-female relations and sexual attitudes, something which Bierce, writing in more conservative times, was not free to do. The book concludes with a lengthy appendix of the best 200 definitions from Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary.
John C. Calhoun's ghost still haunts America today. First elected to congress in 1810, Calhoun served as secretary of war during the war of 1812, and then as vice-president under two very different presidents, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. It was during his time as Jackson's vice president that he crafted his famous doctrine of "state interposition," which laid the groundwork for the south to secede from the union -- and arguably set the nation on course for civil war. Other accounts of Calhoun have portrayed him as a backward-looking traditionalist -- he was, after all, an outspoken apologist for slavery, which he defended as a "positive good." But he was also an extremely complex thinker, and thoroughly engaged in the modern world. He espoused many ideas that resonate strongly with popular currents today: an impatience for the spectacle and shallowness of politics, a concern about the alliance between wealth and power in government, and a skepticism about the United States' ability to spread its style of democracy throughout the world. Calhoun has catapulted back into the public eye in recent years, as the tensions he navigated and inflamed in his own time have surfaced once again. In 2015, a monument to him in Charleston, South Carolina became a flashpoint after a white supremacist murdered nine African-Americans in a nearby church. And numerous commentators have since argued that Calhoun's retrograde ideas are at the root of the modern GOP's problems with race. Bringing together Calhoun's life, his intellectual contributions -- both good and bad -- and his legacy, Robert Elder's book is a revelatory reconsideration of the antebellum South we thought we knew.
The 2012 American Jewish Year Book, “The Annual Record of American Jewish Civilization,” contains major chapters on Jewish secularism (Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar), Canadian Jewry (Morton Weinfeld, David Koffman, and Randal Schnoor), national affairs (Ethan Felson), Jewish communal affairs (Lawrence Grossman), Jewish population in the United States (Ira Sheskin and Arnold Dashefsky), and World Jewish population (Sergio DellaPergola). These chapters provide insight into major trends in the North American and world Jewish community. The volume also acts as a resource for the American Jewish community and for academics studying that community by supplying obituaries and lists of Jewish Federations, Jewish Community Centers, national Jewish organizations, Jewish overnight camps, Jewish museums, Holocaust museums, local and national Jewish periodicals, Jewish honorees, major recent events in the American Jewish community, and academic journals, articles, websites, and books. The volume should prove useful to social scientists and historians of the American Jewish community, Jewish communal workers, the press, and others interested in American and Canadian Jews.​
'Embattled America' is a reinterpretation of conservative evangelical persecution claims. The centrality of such claims to American life is widely known. This book, however, argues against standard approaches to them. It interprets a range of controversial subjects and persons surrounding embattled religion, from the Obama-to-Trump era: Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Wallbuilders, anti-sharia legislation and birthers. The lesson of each episode is linked not to any iteration of religion but to a democratic fundament that is obscured in the obsession with controversial religion.--