This book shows how, through a series of fierce battles over Sabbath laws, legislative chaplains, Bible-reading in public schools and other flashpoints, nineteenth-century secularists mounted a powerful case for a separation of religion and government. Among their diverse ranks were religious skeptics, liberal Protestants, members of minority faiths, labor reformers and defenders of slavery. Drawing on popular petitions to Congress, a neglected historical source, the book explores how this secularist mobilization gathered energy at the grassroots level.
The nineteenth century is usually seen as the golden age of an informal Protestant establishment. Timothy Verhoeven demonstrates that, far from being crushed by an evangelical juggernaut, secularists harnessed a range of cultural forcesthe legacy of the Revolutionary founders, hostility to Catholicism, a belief in national exceptionalism and moreto argue that the United States was not a Christian nation, branding their opponents as fanatics who threatened both democratic liberties as well as true religion.

Presents a history of grassroots mobilizations in favor of a clearer division between religion and government Explores the complex alliances between various secularist campaigners, including religious skeptics, liberal Protestants, people of minority faiths, white supremacists and labor reformers Brings together case studies of church-state conflicts from the early Republic to the Progressive era Appeals to scholars and students of nineteenth-century American history, religious history, legal history and modern church-state conflicts

Autorentext

Timothy Verhoeven is Senior Lecturer in the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies at Monash University, Australia. He is the author of Transatlantic Anti-Catholicism: France and the United States in the Nineteenth Century (Palgrave, 2010) as well as many articles on the history of church-state relations.

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. "Stepping Stone to an Establishment": The 1785 Campaign Against the Religious Tax in Virginia.- 3. Prostrating our rights on the altar of superstition and bigotry:The Sunday Mail Controversy in the Early Republic.- 4. Exposing priestcraft and all its cognate -isms: Chaplains, Temperance and Sunday Travel.- 5. God's Vice-Regents: Political Preachers and the Crisis over Slavery.- 6. How Christian Were the Founders? God and the Constitution After the Civil War.- 7. The Bible Wars: Religion, Morality and Schools in an International Age.- 8. Sunday clubs for wealthy people: Taxing the Churches.- 9. A professedly national secular show: The World's Fair Sunday Opening Controversy.- 10. Conclusion.