In the battles over religion and politics in America, both liberals and conservatives often appeal to history. But in The Myth of American Religious Freedom, historian David Sehat provides an eye-opening history of religion in public life that overturns our most cherished myths. Originally, he shows, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government, which had limited authority. On the state level, a Protestant moral establishment ruled over
Catholics, Jews, Mormons, agnostics, and others. Not until 1940 did the Supreme Court extend the First Amendment to the states. As the Court began to dismantle the connections between religion and government, religious conservatives mobilized to maintain their power and began the culture wars of the last fifty
years. To trace the rise and fall of this Protestant establishment, Sehat focuses on a series of dissenters-abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, progressive pundit Walter Lippmann, and many others. Shattering myths held by both the left and the right, this book forces us to rethink some of our most deeply held political beliefs.
- ISBN10 0190247215
- ISBN13 9780190247218
- Publish Date 12 November 2015
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
- Format Paperback
- Pages 382
- Language English