Download American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation AudioBook Free
In American Gospel (literally meaning the "good news about America"), New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham sets the record straight on the annals of religion in American public life. As Meacham shows, faith --meaning a belief in an increased power, and the sense that people are God's chosen people-- is definitely at the heart of our national experience, from Jamestown to the Constitutional Convention to the Civil Rights Movement to September 11th. And yet, to start with, America is a nation founded upon the principles of liberty and freedom. Every American is absolve to exercise his own faith or no faith at all. And so a balance is struck, between public religion and private religion; and religious belief is distinct from morality. As Meacham explains, the well-known "wall" between church and state has always separated private religion from the business of the state, yet religious belief is part of the basic foundation of government. Brilliantly articulating a disagreement that links the Founding Fathers to a insightful contemporary viewpoint, American Gospel renews our understanding of history, and what public religion has meant in the us, so that people can move beyond today's religious and political extremism toward a truer understanding of the area of faith in American society.
From the COMPACT DISK edition.
