Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
American Gospel
American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation | Jon Meacham
3 posts | 2 read | 2 to read
The American Gospelliterally, the good news about Americais that religion shapes our public life without controlling it. In this vivid book, New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham tells the human story of how the Founding Fathers viewed faith, and how they ultimately created a nation in which belief in God is a matter of choice. At a time when our country seems divided by extremism, American Gospel draws on the past to offer a new perspective. Meacham re-creates the fascinating history of a nation grappling with religion and politicsfrom John Winthrops city on a hill sermon to Thomas Jeffersons Declaration of Independence; from the Revolution to the Civil War; from a proposed nineteenth-century Christian Amendment to the Constitution to Martin Luther King, Jr.s call for civil rights; from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. Debates about religion and politics are often more divisive than illuminating. Secularists point to a wall of separation between church and state, while many conservatives act as though the Founding Fathers were apostles in knee britches. As Meacham shows in this brisk narrative, neither extreme has it right. At the heart of the American experiment lies the God of what Benjamin Franklin called public religion, a God who invests all human beings with inalienable rights while protecting private religion from government interference. It is a great American balancing act, and it has served us well. Meacham has written and spoken extensively about religion and politics, and he brings historical authority and a sense of hope to the issue. American Gospel makes it compellingly clear that the nations best chance of summoning what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature lies in recovering the spirit and sense of the Founding. In looking back, we may find the light to lead us forward.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
review
iread2much
post image
Mehso-so

I found that this book wasn‘t very well argued and didn‘t really catch my interest and that is sad since the book focused on an interesting topic. The author argues that since freedom of religion is really freedom of thought and practice, American history is a history of faith, but not of any one faith. The book needs in-text citations BADLY. 2/5 stars

Leftcoastzen Wow , not many times do your beautiful doggies look at the camera!🐶 3y
iread2much @Leftcoastzen right?! 😂 that‘s why I didn‘t even try to retake the photo, even though it‘s awful 3y
20 likes2 comments
quote
BelcherAJB

"When all their aim was nothing but present profit." Captain John Smith speaking the first charter of Virginia given by King James 1606.

review
BelcherAJB
post image
Pickpick

If we think the American experiment was based in any way upon the Christian faith we deceive ours lives. The foundation was profit and material gain. Jon Meecham does a masterful job of his historiography while reporting a highly readable and well written chronicle of the experience we know as America. If you are interested in knowing, through a historian citing source texts, our great nation came to be I recommend this book hands down.