|
Showing 1 - 6 of
6 matches in All Departments
Both reason and religion have been acknowledged by scholars to have
had a profound impact on the foundation and formation of the
American regime. But the significance, pervasiveness, and depth of
that impact have also been disputed. While many have approached the
American founding period with an interest in the influence of
Enlightenment reason or Biblical religion, they have often assumed
such influences to be exclusive, irreconcilable, or contradictory.
Few scholarly works have sought to study the mutual influence of
reason and religion as intertwined strands shaping the American
historical and political experience at its founding. The purpose of
the chapters in this volume, authored by a distinguished group of
scholars in political science, intellectual history, literature,
and philosophy, is to examine how this mutual influence was made
manifest in the American Founding-especially in the writings,
speeches, and thought of critical figures (Thomas Paine, Benjamin
Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison,
Alexander Hamilton, Charles Carroll), and in later works by key
interpreters of the American Founding (Alexis de Tocqueville and
Abraham Lincoln). Taken as a whole, then, this volume does not
attempt to explain away the potential opposition between religion
and reason in the American mind of the late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth- centuries, but instead argues that there is a uniquely
American perspective and political thought that emerges from this
tension. The chapters gathered here, individually and collectively,
seek to illuminate the animating affect of this tension on the
political rhetoric, thought, and history of the early American
period. By taking seriously and exploring the mutual influence of
these two themes in creative tension, rather than seeing them as
diametrically opposed or as mutually exclusive, this volume thus
reveals how the pervasiveness and resonance of Biblical narratives
and religion supported and infused Enlightened political discourse
and action at the Founding, thereby articulating the
complementarity of reason and religion during this critical period.
Both reason and religion have been acknowledged by scholars to have
had a profound impact on the foundation and formation of the
American regime. But the significance, pervasiveness, and depth of
that impact have also been disputed. While many have approached the
American founding period with an interest in the influence of
Enlightenment reason or Biblical religion, they have often assumed
such influences to be exclusive, irreconcilable, or contradictory.
Few scholarly works have sought to study the mutual influence of
reason and religion as intertwined strands shaping the American
historical and political experience at its founding. The purpose of
the chapters in this volume, authored by a distinguished group of
scholars in political science, intellectual history, literature,
and philosophy, is to examine how this mutual influence was made
manifest in the American Founding especially in the writings,
speeches, and thought of critical figures (Thomas Paine, Benjamin
Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison,
Alexander Hamilton, Charles Carroll), and in later works by key
interpreters of the American Founding (Alexis de Tocqueville and
Abraham Lincoln). Taken as a whole, then, this volume does not
attempt to explain away the potential opposition between religion
and reason in the American mind of the late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth- centuries, but instead argues that there is a uniquely
American perspective and political thought that emerges from this
tension. The chapters gathered here, individually and collectively,
seek to illuminate the animating affect of this tension on the
political rhetoric, thought, and history of the early American
period. By taking seriously and exploring the mutual influence of
these two themes in creative tension, rather than seeing them as
diametrically opposed or as mutually exclusive, this volume thus
reveals how the pervasiveness and resonance of Biblical narratives
and religion supported and infused Enlightened political discourse
and action at the Founding, thereby articulating the
complementarity of reason and religion during this critical period.
Using fears of Catholicism as a mechanism through which to explore
the contours of Anglo-American understandings of freedom,
Anti-Catholicism in America, 1620-1860 reveals the ironic role that
anti-Catholicism played in defining and sustaining some of the core
values of American identity, values that continue to animate our
religious and political discussions today. Farrelly explains how
that bias helped to shape colonial and antebellum cultural
understandings of God, the individual, salvation, society,
government, law, national identity, and freedom. In so doing,
Anti-Catholicism in America, 1620-1860 provides contemporary
observers with a framework for understanding what is at stake in
the debate over the place of Muslims and other non-Christian groups
in American society.
"Maura Farrelly has a fresh and challenging perspective on the
Americanization of Roman Catholicism, one that tracks its origins
to early Maryland. Papist Patriots bears close reading by all
students of American history and religion." - Christine Leigh
Heyrman, Professor of American History, University of Delaware
"Distinguished by impressive research and a well-written, lively
narrative, Farrelly's study will change the way historians think
about Catholics in colonial America. The author argues that the
foundation for the making of an American Catholic identity rests in
Maryland's 1649 Act of Religious Toleration. Over time, Maryland's
Catholics became more American than English so that by the 1770s
these Papists had become ardent Patriots. By endorsing the
republicanism and individualism of the independence movement they
created an American Catholic identity that has endured into the
twenty-first century." - Jay P. Dolan, Professor Emeritus of
History, University of Notre Dame Many historians have noted the
role that anti-Catholicism played in stirring up animosity against
the king and Parliament in the early days of the Revolution. Yet,
in spite of the rhetoric, Maryland's Catholics supported the
independence movement more enthusiastically than their Protestant
neighbors to the point where the support for the war in
predominately Catholic Maryland may even have been greater than
that exhibited by the residents of Massachusetts. Not only did
Maryland's Catholics embrace the idea of independence, they also
embraced the individualistic, rights-oriented ideology that defined
the Revolution, even though theirs was a communally-oriented
denomination that stressed the importance of hierarchy, order, and
obligation. Catholic leaders in Europe made it clear that the war
was a "sedition" worthy of damnation, even as they acknowledged
that England had been no friend to the Catholic Church. So why,
then, did "papists" become "patriots?" Farrelly finds that the
answer has a long history, one that begins in England in the early
seventeenth century and gains momentum during the nine decades
preceding the American Revolution, when Maryland's Catholics lost a
religious toleration that had been uniquely theirs in the
English-speaking world, and were forced to maintain their faith in
an environment that was legally hostile and clerically poor. This
experience made Maryland's Catholics the colonists who were most
prepared in 1776 to accept the cultural, ideological, and
psychological implications of a break from England.
Using fears of Catholicism as a mechanism through which to explore
the contours of Anglo-American understandings of freedom,
Anti-Catholicism in America, 1620-1860 reveals the ironic role that
anti-Catholicism played in defining and sustaining some of the core
values of American identity, values that continue to animate our
religious and political discussions today. Farrelly explains how
that bias helped to shape colonial and antebellum cultural
understandings of God, the individual, salvation, society,
government, law, national identity, and freedom. In so doing,
Anti-Catholicism in America, 1620-1860 provides contemporary
observers with a framework for understanding what is at stake in
the debate over the place of Muslims and other non-Christian groups
in American society.
|
|