What do you think?
Rate this book
The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic
Challenging carved-in-stone tenets of Christianity, deism began sprouting in colonial America in the early 18th century, was flourishing nicely by the American revolution, and to all intents and purposes was dead by 1811. Despite its hasty demise, deism left a theological legacy. Christian sensibility would never be quite the same again.
394 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1992
12 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 22, 2021
Okay...this book.
This book took me a long time to read. Months really. I stopped, I started, I put it down, and I picked it up.
This book divides the material into chapters according to the author/person presented in the book. For instance, we have Jefferson, Franklin, Allen, Palmer etc. There is some biographic information that tells us about the person the chapter is about and then we have their writings that provides evidence that they were a deist.
The biographical sections were well-written and offered insights into the kind of people and the context in which they were living.
The people featured in the chapters - some of their writings were wonderful to read. Some of the writing is downright wonderful (and make some excellent points about the Christian religion), and other writings are filled with long rambling sentences that sometimes ramble back on themselves! The rambling sections (looking at you, Elihu Palmer!!) made me want to reach through time to strangle the author responsible.
Overall, the book gave a good overview of the Who's Who of the American Deism movement, and even offered some material from the deistic publications of the time.
If you're looking for primary source materials about American Deism with author information attached, this is the book for you. Having a fundamental understanding of what Deism is (was) and a basic idea of the historical context surrounding the times will help in reading this book.
This book took me a long time to read. Months really. I stopped, I started, I put it down, and I picked it up.
This book divides the material into chapters according to the author/person presented in the book. For instance, we have Jefferson, Franklin, Allen, Palmer etc. There is some biographic information that tells us about the person the chapter is about and then we have their writings that provides evidence that they were a deist.
The biographical sections were well-written and offered insights into the kind of people and the context in which they were living.
The people featured in the chapters - some of their writings were wonderful to read. Some of the writing is downright wonderful (and make some excellent points about the Christian religion), and other writings are filled with long rambling sentences that sometimes ramble back on themselves! The rambling sections (looking at you, Elihu Palmer!!) made me want to reach through time to strangle the author responsible.
Overall, the book gave a good overview of the Who's Who of the American Deism movement, and even offered some material from the deistic publications of the time.
If you're looking for primary source materials about American Deism with author information attached, this is the book for you. Having a fundamental understanding of what Deism is (was) and a basic idea of the historical context surrounding the times will help in reading this book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review