Politics And Religion By Gerard Hauser

One of the main reasons that the settlers came and founded America was for religious freedom. Colonist made the long and dangerous journey for other reasons as well, but a major factor was the search for religious freedom. Coming to America alone did not solve this problem; the journey to religious freedom was just that, a journey. Everyone had a slightly different idea of what this new nation’s ‘religious freedom’ should look like and it took many years to come to a compromise.

In American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation, Jon Meacham explores the dynamic relationship between religion and government in America in the hope that contemporary America can learn from the past. The period covered by the book spans from 1620 until Reagan’s presidency in the late 1980s. However, Meacham focuses on the Founding Fathers stances and their continued impact on American politics. More specifically, the book details the conflict over the separation of private religious expression and the more neutral ‘public religion’.

Summary: The division between church and state is a gray line that is often crossed and argued about. For example, Gwen Wilde, the author, argues that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance requires people who do not believe in God to recite something they do not necessarily believe in. If a person chose not to say the full Pledge, including to utter the words “under God” they run the risk of being called unpatriotic. The author continually argues that the words “under God” add a religious doctrine that not all Americans believe in.

While many are unaware, the Protestant Reformation continues to be impactful in how people in America today view freedom, government, and rights. In general, the Reformation has played a role on the construction of America’s social order and diversity, the day-to-day natural life, and religious freedom. Beginning with the American Constitution, the foundation of Christianity (unversed in any other part of the world), unites religious moral standards with the American way of thinking regarding cultural diversity, equal rights, religious belief, and sexual characteristics.

Although very limited, colonial America established primitive forms of democratic government. Across colonial America, early democracy began to take form. This development can be attributed to many factors, namely the desire of American settlers to distance themselves from Britain’s tyrannical government, and thus their wish to prevent this form of government form appearing in America. Other contributing factors were the democracy and egalitarianism-centered morals of the religiously devout American settlers.

Although our Declaration of Independence did not occur until the late 18th century, the founding fathers had already learned the lessons of congruity between government and religion. Their predecessors to the new world, the pilgrims, had famously sought religious refuge in the Americas in the early 17th century, roughly 150 years earlier. As the American Colonies were British domain, the founding fathers knew all too well about the Divine Right of Kings and the doctrine that monarchs derive their authority directly from God himself. As the worldly embodiment of the divine, monarchs could create and mandate doctrine, as Henry VIII had so boldly done in the early 16th century, well before America was colonized by the British (Rockett, 2004).

In recent discussions of religion and politics, a controversial issue has been whether or not religion has a place in our political decision-making. On the one hand, some argue that religion and politics should coexist for the greater good. From this perspective, the United States government should implement religious beliefs into all of their decision-making, because it is the right thing to do. On the other hand, however, others argue that religion has no place in politics, it clouds judgment, creates unfair separation against opposing beliefs, and does more harm than good. Religion has had its effect on politics since Jesus Christ was created. Laws have passed that are heavily influenced by the good book. In the words

ought to play in the public life of the American nation for the first time

This paper is a book critique of The Godless Constitution. The first chapter of the book is titled “Is America a Christian Nation?” and it is an introduction for the rest of the book. In this chapter, the main idea is to open the reader’s mind about that the constitution was created with the idea that religious believes will not influence in the politics of the nation. The authors state that “The principal framers of the American political system wanted no religious parties in national politics” (Kramnick and Moore, 23). Actually, the creation of a constitution without influence of religion was not an act of irreverence. The authors believe that the creation of the constitution was a support to the idea that religion can preserve the civil morality necessary for democracy, without an influence on any political party. The end of the chapter is the description of the following chapters and with a disguise warning that both authors were raise in religious families and they wrote the book with high respect for America’s religious traditions (Kramnick and Moore, 25). The second chapter, called “The Godless Constitution” explains how the different terms to talk about God were taken out and a “no religious test” clause was adopted with little discussion. This clause was a “veritable firestorm” during the ratification debates in several states (Kramnick and Moore, 32). For many people the “no religious test” clause was considered as the gravest defect of the Constitution (Kramnick

The book, Religion in the Public Square: The Place of Religious Convictions Political Debate (1997), is a presentation of a debate between two foremost thinkers who argue about the place that religion should have in the public forum, more specifically in politics.

America’s constitutional order is designed along the same concepts as the covenants used by colonial settlers when creating religious settlements. While America’s government would later emphasis the separation of church and state, the foundation of the documents largely draws from the structure and principles highlighted in early colonial documents used in the creation of religiously oriented settlements. As the number of settlements grew, loose structures were developed to govern multiple settlements. Ultimately, the American system incorporated numerous layers of government in a federal system (Dehart 2017).

In American history, voting has been a direct involvement of the public with the government. Patterns based on the structure of voting have emerged to demographically section the voting population. Scholars have found that these voting patterns can be followed by studying the political activity of different religious groups. From the 1960s to our most recent elections, voting patterns among these groups have fluctuated as well as stayed constant. The reason for such changes, or lack thereof, can be credited to a number of social issues such as abortion, gay rights, and other major secular controversies as well as the historical context from where their political decisions arise. These patterns show that some people experience pressure from

To sum up, American civil religion was never secular, on the contrary, it borrowed particularly from the religious traditions in such a way that the average American saw no conflict between church and state. In this way, civil religion was able to build up without any anger conflict with the church’s powerful signs of national solidarity, and to mobilize deep levels of personal stimulation for the achievement of national goals. Civil religion describes ‘America’ as standing like a medium, or middle term, between ‘God’ and the American citizens. American civil religion, hence, is clearly involves in the most political issues of the day, and it appears via Presidential rhetoric speeches in many national events. We can further say that,

On July 12, 2007, for the first time in American history the Senate session that day was opened by a prayer; unlike any other prayer, it was given by a Hindu priest. At first sight, it would seem as though the ideals designed by the framers of the Constitution were alive and well; the pluralization of the United States of America, the land of freedom of religion, and the right to worship without persecution. However, the Christian right wing religious group Operation Save America entered the Senate floor and began to heckle Rajan Zed, the Hindu priest, perpetuating that Hinduism is an “abomination”, as Hindus do not worship “The lord Jesus Christ”. This leads us to ask the question: Is America a land of religious pluralism, or is it a

In the early 1830’s Alex Tocqueville , a French historian and politician wrote the “holy cult of freedom”, he encountered on his own visit to the United States. His key insite was; democracy meant far more than the right to vote, or a particular set of instructions. It was a habit of