Pulpit and Nation (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | Spencer W. McBride | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

In Pulpit and Nation, Spencer McBride highlights the importance
of Protestant clergymen in early American political culture, elucidating the actual role of
religion in the founding era. Beginning with colonial precedents for clerical involvement in
politics and concluding with false rumors of Thomas Jefferson’s conversion to Christianity
in 1817, this book reveals the ways in which the clergy’s political activism—and early
Americans’ general use of religious language and symbols in their political
discourse—expanded and evolved to become an integral piece in the invention of an American
national identity. Offering a fresh examination of some of the key junctures in the development
of the American political system—the Revolution, the ratification debates of 1787–88, and the
formation of political parties in the 1790s—McBride shows how religious arguments, sentiments,
and motivations were subtly interwoven with political ones in the creation of the early American
republic. Ultimately, Pulpit and Nation reveals that while religious
expression was common in the political culture of the Revolutionary era, it was as much the
calculated design of ambitious men seeking power as it was the natural outgrowth of a devoutly
religious people.