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Solemn Reverence
- The Separation of Church and State in American Life
- Narrated by: Randall Balmer
- Length: 3 hrs and 24 mins
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Solemn Reverence
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Publisher's summary
"A slender but thoroughly argued case for reinforcing the wall between church and state.... A stern warning that those who push for the intrusion of religion into public life do so at the peril of both." (Kirkus Reviews)
The First Amendment to the US Constitution codified the principle that the government should play no role in favoring or supporting any religion, while allowing free exercise of all religions (including unbelief). More than two centuries later, the results from this experiment are overwhelming: The separation of church and state has shielded the government from religious factionalism, and the United States boasts a diverse religious culture unmatched anywhere in the world. In Solemn Reverence, Randall Balmer, one of the premier historians of religion in America, reviews both the history of the separation of church and state as well as the various attempts to undermine that wall of separation. Despite the fact that the First Amendment and the separation of church and state has served the nation remarkably well, he argues, its future is by no means assured.
Critic reviews
"Who needs this book? Pastors, professors, and all those who want to preserve one of the great distinctions of America." (Scot McNight, in Christianity Today)
"Balmer puts his skill as a historian on display as he makes well-resourced arguments, but he also excels here as a storyteller." (Los Angeles Review of Books)
“A thoroughly argued case for reinforcing the wall between church and state.... A stern warning that those who push for the intrusion of religion into public life do so at the peril of both.” (Kirkus Reviews)
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
In The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Porwancher debunks a string of myths about the origins of this founding father to arrive at a startling conclusion: Hamilton, in all likelihood, was born and raised Jewish. For more than two centuries, his youth in the Caribbean has remained shrouded in mystery. Hamilton himself wanted it that way, and most biographers have simply assumed he had a Christian boyhood. With a detective's persistence and a historian's rigor, Porwancher upends that assumption.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Anti-Semitism and Religious Liberty
- By Detailed Shopper on 12-07-23
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Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (Even When They Lose Elections)
- The Battles That Define America from Jefferson's Heresies to Gay Marriage
- By: Stephen Prothero
- Narrated by: Tristan Morris
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4 out of 5 stars 48
Though they may seem to be dividing the country irreparably, today's heated cultural and political battles between right and left, progressives and the Tea Party, religious and secular are far from unprecedented. In this engaging and important work, Stephen Prothero reframes the current debate, viewing it as the latest in a number of flashpoints that have shaped our national identity.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Resistance to Change
- By Joanne on 04-07-16
By: Stephen Prothero
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The Evangelicals
- The Struggle to Shape America
- By: Frances FitzGerald
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 25 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 342
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 298
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 290
This groundbreaking book from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Frances FitzGerald is the first to tell the powerful, dramatic story of the Evangelical movement in America - from the Puritan era to the 2016 presidential election. Evangelicals have, in many ways, defined the nation. They have shaped our culture and our politics. Frances FitzGerald's narrative of this distinctively American movement is a major work of history, piecing together the centuries-long story for the first time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book
- By Gary LA on 12-27-17
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God of Liberty
- A Religious History of the American Revolution
- By: Thomas S. Kidd
- Narrated by: Mark Coffin
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
Before the Revolutionary War, America was a nation divided by different faiths. But when the war for independence sparked in 1776, colonists united under the banner of religious freedom. Evangelical frontiersmen and Deist intellectuals set aside their differences to defend a belief they shared, the right to worship freely. Inspiring an unlikely but powerful alliance, it was the idea of religious liberty that brought the colonists together in the battle against British tyranny.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The founding has a complicated religious history
- By Adam Shields on 03-24-16
By: Thomas S. Kidd
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We the Fallen People
- The Founders and the Future of American Democracy
- By: Robert Tracy McKenzie
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story5 out of 5 stars 26
We the Fallen People presents a close look at the ideas of human nature to be found in the history of American democratic thought. McKenzie, following C. S. Lewis, claims there are only two reasons to believe in majority rule: because we have confidence in human nature - or because we don't. The Founders subscribed to the biblical principle that humans are fallen and their virtue is always doubtful, and they wrote the US Constitution to frame a republic intended to handle our weaknesses.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Thoughtful reflection and historical perspective, but ultimately no easy answer
- By Brandon on 03-28-23
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Our Constitution the Way it Was
- By: Madalyn Murray O'Hair
- Narrated by: David Smalley
- Length: 2 hrs and 36 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
In these transcripts of her American Atheist Radio programs, Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair tells us about Freedom of Religion in Colonial America, American Deism, Rewriting of History by Christians, The Christianity of our Founding as a Nation, Free thought in American Historical Documents, Free thought Organizations in the Early U.S., Thomas Paine - American Deist and Freethinker, Colonel Ethan Allen, James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, Jefferson's Idea of Religious Freedom, and Jefferson on Christianity.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Phenomenal!!!
- By Average Joe on 01-17-18
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Baptists in America
- A History
- By: Thomas S. Kidd, Barry Hankins
- Narrated by: Jonathan Walker
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 99
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 84
In Baptists in America, Thomas S. Kidd and Barry Hankins explore the long-running tensions between church, state, and culture that Baptists have shaped and navigated. Despite the moment of unity that their early persecution provided, their history has been marked by internal battles and schisms that were microcosms of national events, from the conflict over slavery that divided North from South to the conservative revolution of the 1970s and '80s.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Baptist critics
- By Paul on 11-27-16
By: Thomas S. Kidd, and others
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American Gospel
- God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation
- By: Jon Meacham
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 451
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 270
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 265
In American Gospel (literally meaning the "good news about America"), New York Times best-selling author Jon Meacham sets the record straight on the history of religion in American public life. As Meacham shows, faith, meaning a belief in a higher power, and the sense that we are God's chosen, has always been at the heart of our national experience, from Jamestown to the Constitutional Convention to the Civil Rights Movement to September 11th.
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5 out of 5 stars
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what you weren't taught in school
- By Stanley on 06-12-06
By: Jon Meacham
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The Supreme Court
- The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America
- By: Jeffrey Rosen
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 187
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 90
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Story4 out of 5 stars 91
A leading Supreme Court expert recounts the personal and philosophical rivalries that forged our nation's highest court and continue to shape our daily lives. The Supreme Court is the most mysterious branch of government, and yet the Court is at root a human institution, made up of very bright people with very strong egos, for whom political and judicial conflicts often become personal.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Overruled!
- By Stephen McLeod on 08-23-08
By: Jeffrey Rosen
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These Truths
- A History of the United States
- By: Jill Lepore
- Narrated by: Jill Lepore
- Length: 29 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,296
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 2,048
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,010
In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. In riveting prose, These Truths tells the story of America, beginning in 1492, to ask whether the course of events has proven the nation's founding truths or belied them.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Good Story but distracting sound engineering
- By MindSpiker on 11-21-18
By: Jill Lepore
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Unholy
- Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump
- By: Sarah Posner
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 288
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 242
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 239
In this taut inquiry, Posner digs deep into the radical history of the religious right to reveal how issues of race and xenophobia have always been at the movement’s core, and how religion often cloaked anxieties about perceived threats to a white, Christian America. Fueled by an antidemocratic impulse, and united by this narrative of reverse victimization, the religious right and the alt-right support a common agenda.
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5 out of 5 stars
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How We Got Here
- By D. Sooley on 06-16-20
By: Sarah Posner
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The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America
- The Thom Hartmann Hidden History Series
- By: Thom Hartmann
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 131
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 117
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 117
Taking his typically in-depth, historically informed view, Thom Hartmann asks: What if the Supreme Court didn't have the power to strike down laws? According to the Constitution, it doesn't. From the founding of the republic until 1803, the Supreme Court was the final court of appeals, as it was always meant to be. So where did the concept of judicial review start? As so much of modern American history, it began with the battle between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, and with Marbury v. Madison.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A must read to understand why voting is essential.
- By Brandon WIlliams on 10-05-19
By: Thom Hartmann
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Forged in Faith
- How Faith Shaped the Birth of the Nation 1607-1776
- By: Rod Gragg
- Narrated by: Maurice England
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 52
The true drama of how faith motivated America's Founding Fathers, influenced the Declaration of Independence, and inspired the birth of the nation. Forged in Faith recounts how faith motivated Pilgrims, Puritans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, Catholics, and Anglicans alike in a unique and fascinating history of early America and the faith that forged a nation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Incredible must read.
- By Tim Patt on 07-29-21
By: Rod Gragg
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Supreme Power
- 7 Pivotal Supreme Court Decisions That Had a Major Impact on America
- By: Ted Stewart
- Narrated by: Art Allen
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 26
Best-selling author Ted Stewart explains how the Supreme Court and its nine appointed members now stand at a crucial point in their power to hand down momentous and far-ranging decisions. Today's Court affects every major area of American life, from health care to civil rights, from abortion to marriage. This fascinating book reveals the complex history of the Court as told through seven pivotal decisions.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Polemical, downright ridiculous at times
- By Joe Igla on 11-04-17
By: Ted Stewart