Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers

ISBN-13: 9780199987931 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 344 str.

Daniel L. Dreisbach

Opis

No book was more accessible or familiar to the American founders than the Bible, and no book was more frequently alluded to or quoted from in the political discourse of the age. How and for what purposes did the founding generation use the Bible? How did the Bible influence their political culture?

Shedding new light on some of the most familiar rhetoric of the founding era, Daniel Dreisbach analyzes the founders' diverse use of scripture, ranging from the literary to the theological. He shows that they looked to the Bible for insights on human nature, civic virtue, political authority, and the rights and duties of citizens, as well as for political and legal models to emulate. They quoted scripture to authorize civil resistance, to invoke divine blessings for righteous nations, and to provide the language of liberty that would be appropriated by patriotic Americans.

Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers broaches the perennial question of whether the American founding was, to some extent, informed by religious--specifically Christian--ideas. In the sense that the founding generation were members of a biblically literate society that placed the Bible at the center of culture and discourse, the answer to that question is clearly "yes." Ignoring the Bible's influence on the founders, Dreisbach warns, produces a distorted image of the American political experiment, and of the concept of self-government on which America is built.

Recenzje

One of the many merits of Daniel Dreisbach's book is to show how misleading this picture [of the Founding Fathers as cool to religion] is. Against this popular image, the Bible was referenced more often than any other text, or even writer, during the Revolutionary period... Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers is a scholarly book, drawing on an abundance of source material and demonstrating an admirable familiarity with the period and the Bible.

O autorze

Daniel L. Dreisbach is a professor at American University in Washington, D.C. He received a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Virginia. He has written extensively on the intersection of religion, politics, and law in the American founding.