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The Spirituality of the English and American Deists - Joseph Waligore

The Spirituality of the English and American Deists

How God Became Good

(Autor)

Buch | Hardcover
346 Seiten
2023
Lexington Books/Fortress Academic (Verlag)
978-1-6669-2063-5 (ISBN)
CHF 152,00 inkl. MwSt
The English and American deists rejected Christianity, which they believed portrayed God as cruel. In The Spirituality of the English and American Deists, Waligore shows how the deists were the first group of modern thinkers who were spiritual but not religious.
The deists have been misunderstood as Enlightenment thinkers who believed in an inactive deity. Instead, the deists were spiritually oriented people who believed God treated all his children fairly. Unlike the biblical God, the deist God did not punish entire nations with plagues, curse innocent people, or order the extermination of whole nations. In deism, for the first time in modern Western history, God “became” good.

The Spirituality of the English and American Deists: How God Became Good explores how the English deists were especially important because they formulated the arguments that most of the later deists accepted. Half of the English deists claimed they were advocating the Christianity Jesus taught before his later followers perverted his teachings. Joseph Waligore call these deists Jesus-centered deists.

Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams studied these Jesus-centered deists and had similar beliefs. While some of the most prominent American Founders were deists, deism had little or no influence on the religious parts of the Constitution and the First Amendment.

Deism did not die out at the end of the Enlightenment. Instead, under different names and forms it has continued to be a significant religious force. Informed observers even think a deistic spiritual outlook is the most popular religious or spiritual outlook in contemporary America.

Joseph Waligore is a retired philosophy and religious studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One: The Myth of Deism’s Inactive and Distant God

Chapter Two: The Origins of Seventeenth-Century English Deism

Chapter Three: The Protestant Background of Eighteenth-Century English Deism

Chapter Four: God’s Fairness and Eighteenth-Century English Deism

Chapter Five: The English Deists and the Socratic Spiritual Tradition

Chapter Six: Jesus-centered Deism in England

Chapter Seven: The Religious Beliefs of Ben Franklin

Chapter Eight: The Religious Beliefs of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams

Chapter Nine: The Religious Beliefs of George Washington

Chapter Ten: Deism and the American Founders

Chapter Eleven: The Popularity and Decline of Thomas Paine’s Kind of Deism

Chapter Twelve: The Rebirth of Jesus-centered Deism in Liberal Protestantism

Conclusion: Contemporary American Deism

Appendix One: Supernatural Beliefs of the English Deists

Appendix Two: A Register of the English Deists

Bibliography

About the Author

Erscheinungsdatum
Sprache englisch
Maße 159 x 237 mm
Gewicht 649 g
Themenwelt Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie der Neuzeit
Geisteswissenschaften Religion / Theologie
ISBN-10 1-6669-2063-0 / 1666920630
ISBN-13 978-1-6669-2063-5 / 9781666920635
Zustand Neuware
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