Description: Further DetailsTitle: American FreethinkerCondition: NewSubtitle: Elihu Palmer and the Struggle for Religious Freedom in the New NationISBN-10: 0812252713EAN: 9780812252712ISBN: 9780812252712Publisher: University of Pennsylvania PressFormat: HardbackRelease Date: 12/18/2020Description: The first comprehensive biography of Elihu Palmer tells the life story of a freethinker who was at the heart of the early United States' protracted contest over religious freedom and free speech.When the United States was new, a lapsed minister named Elihu Palmer shared with his fellow Americans the radical idea that virtue required no religious foundation. A better source for morality, he said, could be found in the natural world: the interconnected web of life that inspired compassion for all living things. Religions that deny these universal connections should be discarded, he insisted. For this, his Christian critics denounced him as a heretic whose ideas endangered the country.Although his publications and speaking tours made him one of the most infamous American freethinkers in his day, Elihu Palmer has been largely forgotten. No cache of his personal papers exists and his book has been long out of print. Yet his story merits telling, Kirsten Fischer argues, and not only for the dramatic account of a man who lost his eyesight before the age of thirty and still became a book author, newspaper editor, and itinerant public speaker. Even more intriguing is his encounter with a cosmology that envisioned the universe as interconnected, alive with sensation, and everywhere infused with a divine life force.Palmer's "heresy" tested the nation's recently proclaimed commitment to freedom of religion and of speech. In this he was not alone. Fischer reveals that Palmer engaged in person and in print with an array of freethinkers—some famous, others now obscure. The flourishing of diverse religious opinion struck some of his contemporaries as foundational to a healthy democracy while others believed that only a strong Christian faith could support democratic self-governance. This first comprehensive biography of Palmer draws on extensive archival research to tell the life story of a freethinker who was at the heart of the new nation's protracted contest over religious freedom and free speech—a debate that continues to resonate today.Language: EnglishCountry/Region of Manufacture: USItem Height: 229mmItem Length: 152mmAuthor: Kirsten FischerGenre: HistoryBook Series: Early American StudiesRelease Year: 2020 Missing Information?Please contact us if any details are missing and where possible we will add the information to our listing.
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Book Title: American Freethinker
Title: American Freethinker
Subtitle: Elihu Palmer and the Struggle for Religious Freedom in the New Na
ISBN-10: 0812252713
EAN: 9780812252712
ISBN: 9780812252712
Release Date: 12/18/2020
Release Year: 2020
Country/Region of Manufacture: US
Genre: History
Number of Pages: 304 Pages
Publication Name: American Freethinker : Elihu Palmer and the Struggle for Religious Freedom in the New Nation
Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Publication Year: 2020
Subject: United States / Colonial Period (1600-1775), General, Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies)
Item Height: 1.1 in
Item Weight: 23.2 Oz
Type: Textbook
Item Length: 9.3 in
Subject Area: Religion, History
Author: Kirsten Fischer
Item Width: 6.3 in
Series: Early American Studies
Format: Hardcover
