This Week's Suggested Book
from the Ashbrook Center
(Monday, January 12, 1998)
 | | The Politics of Revelation and Reason:
Religion and Civic Life in the New Nation
by John G. West, Jr. |
University Press of Kansas
307 pages, January 1996
Hardcover, 35.00
ISBN: 0700607803
A percentage of the proceeds from your purchase of this book from Amazon.com will benefit the
Ashbrook Center.
In recent years, controversies over abortion, school prayer, and religious cults have raised new questions about the delicate balance between church and state, between true believers and civic authority. John West shows that America's Founders had already anticipated and answered such questions by carefully defining religion's proper role in politics.
West contends that the Founders and their immediate successors encouraged religion to play a dynamic, positive role in politics. Examining Christian political activism from 1800 to 1835—in particular, evangelical challenges to Cherokee removal, the delivery of Sunday mail, dueling, and other practices evangelicals deemed inconsistent with the moral order—West adds enormously to our understanding of early American church-state conflict. His conclusions will be enlightening for anyone interested in the political role of religion in America's past, evangelical religion in contemporary politics, and the current "culture wars."
- Table of Contents
Preface Introduction: Religion's Persistent Presence in American Politics 1. Religion and the American Founding Revisited 2. Evangelicals and the Politics of Revelation and Reason, 1800-1835 3. Evangelicals and the Sunday Mails 4. Evangelicals and Cherokee Removal Epilogue: The Enduring Legacy of the Politics of Revelation and Reason Notes Bibliography Index
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