Introduction; Part I: Antecedents of the Principles Governing Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in America -- Biblical and European Heritages. Part II: Creating the Principles Governing Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in Colonial America -- Fundamental Laws, Declaration of Rights, and Public Acts on Ecclesiastical Establishments and Religious Liberty in Colonial America; Letters, Tracts, and Sermons on Religious Liberty and Duty in Colonial America. Part III: Framing the Constitutional Principles Governing Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in the American Founding; The Continental and Confederation Congresses and Church-State Relations; State Constitutions, Laws, and Papers on Church and State in Revolutionary America; Petitions, Essays, and Sermons on Church and State in Revolutionary America; References to God and the Christian Religion in the U.S. Constitution; The Religious Test Ban of the U.S. Constitution; The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Part IV Defining and Testing the Constitutional Principles Governing Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in the New Nation; Religion and the Public Policy and Culture of the New Nation; Religion and Politics in the Election of 1800; Thomas Jefferson and the "Wall of Separation"; Christianity, the Common Law, and the American Order; Reflections on the American Church-State Experiment. Appendixes; Historical Chronology, 1607-1833; Summary of Deliberations in the First Federal Congress on the First Amendment Religion Provisions, 1789; Selected Bibliography; Index.
Daniel L Dreisbach is William E Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life for the James Madison Program in American Institutions at Princeton University and professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. Mark David Hall is Herbert Hoover Distinguished Professor of Political Science at George Fox University.
The Sacred Rights of Conscience was a winner in the
Scholarly/Reference category at the Chicago Book Clinic's 2010 Book
& Media Show.
Not a collection of dusty documents of interest only to academics,
The Sacred Rights of Conscience is of direct relevance to current
debates about religious liberty and church-state relations. Today's
concerns about the place and role of religion in public life are
strikingly similar to those of the early nineteenth century. Then,
as well as now, judicial decisions and societal opinions were
shaped by the history of ideas and law presented here. These
documents are a vivid reminder that religion was a dynamic factor
in shaping American culture and that there has been a struggle
since the inception of the republic to define the prudential and
constitutional role of religion in public culture. . . . One
purpose of The Sacred Rights of Conscience is to paint a richer and
fuller portrait of the development of church-state relations and
religious liberty in America, drawing on the writings and
experiences of both the famous and the sometimes forgotten
individuals who contributed to this aspect of American life. This
collection of primary documents was conceived to introduce modern
readers to the history of religious liberty and church-state
relations in the American experience. This volume surveys the
evolving relationship between public religion and American social,
legal, and political culture from the colonial era to the early
national period, and explores the social and political forces that
defined the concept of religious liberty and shaped church-state
relations in America. The Sacred Rights of Conscience combines
important primary documents with editorial notes providing context
and, where appropriate, brief commentary documents and topics were
selected on the basis of the importance of their contribution to
American political and intellectual thought, the saliency of the
ideas they illustrate, and relevancy to enduring themes of
church-state relations. . . . Given the extensive and continuing
influence of history in analyzing the prudential and constitutional
place of religion in the American polity, this collection of
historical documents will cast light not only on the past but also
on the present and the future of the American experiment in liberty
under law. The Sacred Rights of Conscience is a rich collection of
primary sources with a thorough and balanced introduction placing
the documents in historical context and explaining their
significance. The Sacred Rights of Conscience will prove a useful
resource for students of religion in American public life. Students
and scholars of American history, politics, law, theology, and
religion will relish this collection of primary source material,
much of it unavailable or hard to find in other published
collections.
SirReadalot
February 2010
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