Research Catalog
The rise and decline of American religious freedom
- Title
- The rise and decline of American religious freedom / Steven D. Smith.
- Author
- Smith, Steven D. (Steven Douglas), 1952-
- Publication
- Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2014.
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| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person. | Text | Use in library | JFE 15-6599 | Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315 |
Details
- Description
- 223 pages; 24 cm
- Summary
- Overview: Familiar accounts of religious freedom in the United States often tell a story of visionary founders who broke from the centuries-old patterns of Christendom to establish a political arrangement committed to secular and religiously neutral government. These novel commitments were supposedly embodied in the religion clauses of the First Amendment. But this story is largely a fairytale, Steven Smith says in this incisive examination of a much-mythologized subject. He makes the case that the American achievement was not a rejection of Christian commitments but a retrieval of classic Christian ideals of freedom of the church and freedom of conscience. Smith maintains that the distinctive American contribution to religious freedom was not in the First Amendment, which was intended merely to preserve the political status quo in matters of religion. What was important was the commitment to open contestation between secularist and providentialist understandings of the nation which evolved over the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, far from vindicating constitutional principles, as conventional wisdom suggests, the Supreme Court imposed secular neutrality, which effectively repudiated this commitment to open contestation. Rather than upholding what was distinctively American and constitutional, these decisions subverted it. The negative consequences are visible today in the incoherence of religion clause jurisprudence and the intense culture wars in American politics --
- Subjects
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 173-213) and index.
- Contents
- Prologue : the standard story and the revised version -- American religious freedom as Christian-pagan retrieval -- The accidental First Amendment -- The religion question and the American settlement -- Dissolution and denial -- The last chapter? -- Epilogue : whither (religious) freedom?
- Call Number
- JFE 15-6599
- ISBN
- 9780674724754 (hbk.)
- 0674724755 (hbk.)
- LCCN
- 2013021352
- OCLC
- 840460728
- Author
- Smith, Steven D. (Steven Douglas), 1952- author.
- Title
- The rise and decline of American religious freedom / Steven D. Smith.
- Publisher
- Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2014.
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 173-213) and index.
- Research Call Number
- JFE 15-6599