Making Religion Safe for Democracy - Transformation From Hobbes to Tocqueville

This book examines a unified reinterpretation of Christianity by Hobbes, Locke, and Jefferson, and compares that to de Tocqueville's analysis of changes.

List of contents

1. A third way of religious freedom?: Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Backus, and the struggle for the American soul; 2. Hobbes and the roots of religious indifference; 3. Locke and the political theology of toleration; 4. Tocqueville and the democratization of American religion.

About the author

J. Judd Owen is Associate Professor of Political Science, an associated faculty member in the Department of Religion, and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, Atlanta. He has held fellowships with the National Endowment for the Humanities and with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Religion and the Demise of Liberal Rationalism (2001) and the coeditor of Religion, Enlightenment, and the New World Order (2010). His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, and Perspectives on Politics.

Summary

J. Judd Owen sheds new light on the ambiguous status of religion in modern democratic society by tracing a surprisingly unified reinterpretation of Christianity by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Thomas Jefferson, and comparing that reinterpretation to Alexis de Tocqueville's analysis of the democratic transformation of religion in the early United States.

Product details

• Authors: J. Judd Owen, J. Judd (Emory University Owen, Owen J. Judd
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 20.10.2016
• EAN: 9781316609316
• ISBN: 978-1-316-60931-6
• No. of pages: 182
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Philosophy > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: general, reference works; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; England, History, Law, PHILOSOPHY / Political, North America, Philosophy, Religion: general, Politics & government, Social & political philosophy, Political science & theory, social and political philosophy, Religion and Politics