The Bible in American Law, Politics, and Political Rhetoric PDF Download

Author: James Turner Johnson
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Author: James Turner Johnson
Publisher: SBL Press
ISBN: 9781589832329
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
One of six titles in The Bible in American Culture series published to celebrate the Society of Biblical Literature's centennial, this volume explores the intersection of politics and religion from colonial era through the 1950s. Contributors focus on constitutional law, economics, community, and the development of political realism in relationship to the Bible. Each book in the series provides key information for anyone studying the interplay of the Bible and American culture from the foundation of the United States through the mid- to later twentieth century.

Author: John R. Vile
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538141671
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 679

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While scholars increasingly recognize the importance of religion throughout American history, The Bible in American Law and Politics is the first reference book to focus on the key role that the Bible has played in American public life. In considering revolting from Great Britain, Americans contemplated whether this was consistent with scripture. Americans subsequently sought to apply Biblical passages to such issues as slavery, women’s rights, national alcoholic prohibition, issues of war and peace, and the like. American presidents continue to take their oath on the Bible. Some of America’s greatest speeches, for example, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural and William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech, have been grounded on Biblical texts or analogies. Today, Americans continue to cite the Bible for positions as diverse as LGBTQ rights, abortion, immigration, welfare, health care, and other contemporary issues. By providing essays on key speeches, books, documents, legal decisions, and other writings throughout American history that have sought to buttress arguments through citations to Scriptures or to Biblical figures, John Vile provides an indispensable guide for scholars and students in religion, American history, law, and political science to understand how Americans throughout its history have interpreted and applied the Bible to legal and political issues.

Author: James Turner Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Author: Wayne A. Grudem
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0310413583
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 626

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Should Christians be involved in political issues? This comprehensive and readable book presents a political philosophy from the perspective that the Gospel pertains to all of life, including politics. Politics—According to the Bible is an in-depth analysis of conservative and liberal plans to do good for the nation, evaluated in light of the Bible and common sense. Evangelical Bible professor, and author of the bestselling book Systematic Theology, Wayne Grudem unpacks and rejects five common views about Christian influence on politics: "compel religion," "exclude religion," "all government is demonic," "do evangelism, not politics," and "do politics, not evangelism." Instead, he defends a position of "significant Christian influence on government" and explains the Bible's teachings about the purpose of civil government and the characteristics of good or bad governments. Grudem provides a thoughtful analysis of over fifty specific and current political issues dealing with: The protection of life. Marriage, the family, and children. Economic issues and taxation. The environment. National defense Relationships to other nations. Freedom of speech and religion. Quotas. And special interests. Throughout this book, he makes frequent application to the current policies of the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States, but the principles discussed here are relevant for any nation.

Author: Daniel L. Dreisbach
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199987955
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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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.

Author: Paul C. Gutjahr
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190258845
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 737

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Early Americans have long been considered "A People of the Book" Because the nickname was coined primarily to invoke close associations between Americans and the Bible, it is easy to overlook the central fact that it was a book-not a geographic location, a monarch, or even a shared language-that has served as a cornerstone in countless investigations into the formation and fragmentation of early American culture. Few books can lay claim to such powers of civilization-altering influence. Among those which can are sacred books, and for Americans principal among such books stands the Bible. This Handbook is designed to address a noticeable void in resources focused on analyzing the Bible in America in various historical moments and in relationship to specific institutions and cultural expressions. It takes seriously the fact that the Bible is both a physical object that has exercised considerable totemic power, as well as a text with a powerful intellectual design that has inspired everything from national religious and educational practices to a wide spectrum of artistic endeavors to our nation's politics and foreign policy. This Handbook brings together a number of established scholars, as well as younger scholars on the rise, to provide a scholarly overview--rich with bibliographic resources--to those interested in the Bible's role in American cultural formation.

Author: Philip Goff
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190468947
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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There is a paradox in American Christianity. According to Gallup, nearly eight in ten Americans regard the Bible as either the literal word of God or inspired by God. At the same time, surveys have revealed gaps in these same Americans' biblical literacy. These discrepancies reveal the complex relationship between American Christians and Holy Writ, a subject that is widely acknowledged but rarely investigated. The Bible in American Life is a sustained, collaborative reflection on the ways Americans use the Bible in their personal lives. It also considers how other influences, including religious communities and the Internet, shape individuals' comprehension of scripture. Employing both quantitative methods (the General Social Survey and the National Congregations Study) and qualitative research (historical studies for context), The Bible in American Life provides an unprecedented perspective on the Bible's role outside of worship, in the lived religion of a broad cross-section of Americans both now and in the past. The Bible has been central to Christian practice, and has functioned as a cultural touchstone From the broadest scale imaginable, national survey data about all Americans, down to the smallest details, such as the portrayal of Noah and his ark in children's Bibles, this book offers insight and illumination from scholars across the intellectual spectrum. It will be useful and informative for scholars seeking to understand changes in American Christianity as well as clergy seeking more effective ways to preach and teach about scripture in a changing environment.

Author: Andrea A. Lunsford
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 148334343X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1013

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The SAGE Handbook of Rhetorical Studies surveys the latest advances in rhetorical scholarship, synthesizing theories and practices across major areas of study in the field and pointing the way for future studies. Edited by Andrea A. Lunsford and Associate Editors Kirt H. Wilson and Rosa A. Eberly, the Handbook aims to introduce a new generation of students to rhetorical study and provide a deeply informed and ready resource for scholars currently working in the field. Key Features: Brings together scholars from across the disciplines of Speech, Communication, English, and Writing Studies. While rhetoric is by definition interdisciplinary, self-identified scholars in the field are most often institutionally separated from one another. This Handbook bridges this divide by providing a refreshing range of transdisciplinary views on the nature, status, definition, and scope of rhetoric today. Offers a thorough-going overview of rhetorical studies today. Organized in four sections—Historical Studies in Rhetoric; Rhetoric Across the Disciplines; Rhetoric and Pedagogy, and Rhetoric and Public Discourse—the volume provides a single resource for engaging rhetorical studies. Underscores the importance of rhetoric to education across a wide range of disciplines as well as to effective participation in public arenas. Thus the volume connects rhetoric′s long teaching tradition to an activist agenda for informed civic engagement. Addresses methodological and theoretical difficulties and offers means of negotiating them. Provides one of the first introductions to rhetorical studies across cultures and to the related debates concerning comparative and contrastive rhetorics.

Author: John Colman
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700635017
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Religious liberty is one of the hallmarks of American democracy, but the principal architects of this liberty believed that it was only compatible with a certain form of Christianity—namely, a liberal, rational, Christianity. Conservative and postliberal champions of the freedom of religion often ignore this point, sometimes even arguing that orthodox Christianity was, or should be, at the root of democratic liberty. Everyone Orthodox to Themselves, John Colman’s close study of the religious views and political theologies of John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson, shows otherwise. Colman demonstrates that Locke and his three American students specifically took aim at the idea of orthodoxy, which they argued continuously tempted its believers to try to impose an artificial uniformity upon the religious diversity that naturally exists in society and thought it necessary to advance a more rational, nondogmatic Christianity given the threat they saw religious orthodoxy posed to a free, liberal society. While recent arguments have endorsed the idea that there is a crisis of liberalism that can only be met by the revival of more orthodox forms of religious devotion, Colman argues that, according to some of the most prominent American Founders and their philosophic predecessors, such orthodoxy is incompatible with religious freedom and the right to free inquiry. Everyone Orthodox to Themselves demonstrates that only a nondogmatic, rationalist Christianity could be made a friend rather than an adversary to the inalienable right of religious liberty. Colman’s work reveals how the reform of Christianity, and with it the inculcation of a particular theological disposition, is necessary to secure religious liberty and the right of free inquiry. The book also establishes the importance of Locke’s Reasonableness