The First Liberty: America's Foundation in Religious Freedom, Expanded and UpdatedGeorgetown University Press, 07.03.2003 - 296 Seiten At a time when the concept of religion-based politics has taken on new and sometimes ominous tones—even within the United States—it is not only right, but also urgently necessary that William Lee Miller revisit his profound exploration of the place of religious liberty and church and state in America. For this revised edition of The First Liberty, Miller has written a pointed new introduction, discussing how religious liberty has taken on deeper dimensions in a post-9/11 world. With new material on recent Supreme Court cases involving church-state relations and a new concluding chapter on America's religious and political landscape, this volume is an eloquent and thorough interpretation of how religious faith and political freedom have blended and fused to form part of our collective history-and most importantly, how each concept must respect the boundaries of the other. Though many claim the United States to be a "Christian Nation," Miller provides a fascinatingly vivid account of the philosophical skirmishes and political machinations that led to the "wall of separation" between church and state. That famous phrase is Jefferson's, though it does not appear in the Declaration of Independence nor in the Constitution. But Miller follows this seminal idea from three great standard-bearers of religious liberty: Jefferson, Madison, and Roger Williams. Jefferson, who wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the precursor of the First Amendment of the Constitution; James Madison, who was politically responsible for Virginia's acceptance of religious liberty and who, a few years later, helped draft the Bill of Rights; and the even earlier figure, the radical dissenter Roger Williams, who propounded the idea of religious freedom not as a rational secularist but out of a deeply held spiritual faith. Miller re-creates the fierce and vibrant debate among the founding fathers over the means of establishing public virtue in the absence of established religion—a debate that still reverberates in today's passionate arguments about civil rights, school prayer, abortion, Christmas crèches, conscientious objection during warfare—and demonstrates how the right to hold any religious belief has dynamically shaped American political life. |
Im Buch
Ergebnisse 1-5 von 23
... natural tendency to correct the morals of men , restrain their vices , and preserve the peace of society .... These arguments were cast in terms applicable to the immediate sit- uation of postrevolutionary Virginia , but they carried ...
... natural aristocracy " of virtue and talent . A note in the edition of Jefferson's papers quotes the contemporary appraisal by Jefferson's friend William Wirt : " | T ] he bill proposes a simple and beautiful scheme , whereby science ...
... Natural Right ... that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy of the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument , unless he profess or renounce this or that religious ...
... natural right : freedom of " conscience " or of " mind . " Or perhaps on two natural rights , closely interwoven . The claim of the right of every person to believe and profess whatever he does believe resounds through the whole ...
... natural weapons , free argument and debate ; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them . This is the most famous passage in the Virginia statute , the climax of the argument in the preamble and a much ...
Inhalt
1 | |
The Vocation of James Madison | 69 |
This Conscience Is Found in All Mankind | 127 |
A Fixed Star in Our Constitutional Constellation | 187 |
Concluding Notes on Liberty Shaping a Culture | 233 |
Thomas Jefferson A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom 1777 | 255 |
James Madison Memorial and Remonstrance | 257 |
Acknowledgments and Sources | 265 |
Index | 271 |