Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic: Atheists in American Public Life (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

Description

From colonial times into the twentieth century, our laws and court cases
ignored atheism, assuming that all good Americans were religious. Americans
came to associate atheism with radical social philosophies that advocated
violence—especially anarchism and communism. Avowed nonbelievers
were derided, even the famous patriot Thomas Paine. Only in the twentieth
century, with the passage of laws allowing for conscientious objection to war,
did nonbelief enter debates about religious liberty. Still, today every one of the
fifty states has God written into its constitution, with eight requiring a belief in
God for holding public office. God is everywhere in American public life: on our
currency, in the Pledge of Allegiance, and in the national motto. R. Laurence
Moore and Isaac Kramnick explore both God’s omnipresence and the dramatic
rise in nonbelievers that has led to an “atheist awakening” intent on holding the
country to its secular principles.