Zusatztext 51111210 Informationen zum Autor Steven Waldman is co-founder, CEO, and editor in chief of Beliefnet.com, the largest faith and spirituality website. Previously, Waldman was the national editor of U.S. News & World Report and a national correspondent for Newsweek . His writings have also appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Slate, The Washington Monthly, National Review, and elsewhere. He appears frequently on television and radio to discuss religion and politics. He is also the author of The Bill , a book about the creation of AmeriCorps. Waldman lives in New York with his wife, the writer Amy Cunningham, and their children, Joseph and Gordon. Klappentext With refreshing objectivity! beliefnet.com editor in chief Waldman narrates the real story of how America's Founding Fathers forged a new approach to religious liberty--a revolutionary formula that promoted faith by leaving it alone. 1 Christian America Settlers try to plant Protestantism as the official faithand fail The new world was settled to promote christianity. for more than 150 years, colonial governments actively supported and promoted Christianity. Less acknowledged today is a point well understood by the Founding Fathers: Nearly all of these experiments in state encouragement of religion failed. Christopher Columbus believed the world would soon end. In the year 1652, to be exact, Christ would return and usher in a glorious new Kingdomif certain prophecies were fulfilled before then. Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492 was one such event, he wrote later, a clear fulfillment of what Isaiah had prophesied. He was quite certain that God had guided him. With a hand that could be felt, the Lord opened my mind to the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. Another precondition for Jesus's return was the conquest of Jerusalem, which was held by the Muslims. His voyages to the New World would help with that, too, providing a glorious model to inspire Christian warriors, and the gold to pay their way. Finally, his discovery of the new lands would enable Christians to fulfill another essential requirement, the spreading of the Good News to all corners of the world. The Gospel must now be proclaimed to so many lands in such a short time, Columbus explained to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand.1 After encountering hospitable natives in the Caribbean, he had become quite optimistic that he would indeed be able to bring these generous but unsaved souls to God, plus get some cheap labor. If one asks for anything they have they never say no, he wrote.2 They should be good servants . . . and I believe they would easily be made Christians, for they appear to have no religion.3 Though he declared a desire to convert them by love and friendship rather than by force, the Europeans did not have a light touch with the natives. Those in the Caribbean who rejected or destroyed statues of Christian saints were burned at the stake. Slaughter and European-borne disease killed all but a few thousand Indians.4 But the Spaniards persisted and their missions eventually made their way to current-day Florida and Mexico. While the Spaniards did not ultimately win control of the land that became the thirteen American colonies, fear of Catholic Spain's expansion helped prompt England to get serious about settling America in the early 1600s.5 Virginia's Lawes Divine The twin goals of converting Indians and defeating Catholics provided a strong rallying cry for Virginia's settlers. Prospective settlers were instructed to bring no traitors, nor Papists that depend on the Great Whore.6 An Anglican promotional booklet argued that if the Spanish had so much luck pressing their corrupt religion, imagine how successful the English could be with their noble goals of saving tho...

8220;Steven Waldman, a veteran journalist and co-founder of Beliefnet.com, a religious web site, surveys the convictions and legacy of the founders clearly and fairly, with a light touch but a careful eye.”

—New York Times Book Review

“Waldman ends by encouraging us to be like the founders. We should understand their principles, learn from their experience, then have at it ourselves. 'We must pick up the argument that they began and do as they instructed – use our reason to determine our views.' A good place to start is this entertaining, provocative book.”
—New York Times Book Review

"Steven Waldman's enlightening new book, Founding Faith, is wise and engaging on many levels, but Waldman has done a particular service in detailing Madison's role in creating a culture of religious freedom that has served America so well for so long….Founding Faith is an excellent book about an important subject: the inescapable—but manageable—intersection of religious belief and public life. With a grasp of history and an understanding of the exigencies of the moment, Waldman finds a middle ground between those who think of the Founders as apostles in powdered wigs and those who assert, equally inaccurately, that the Founders believed religion had no place in politics."
–Newsweek

"Well-wrought, well-written and well-reasoned—a welcome infusion of calm good sense into a perennially controversial and relevant subject."
–Kirkus Reviews*

• "Founding Faith takes up two central questions about religion in early America. First, what did such Founding Fathers as Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison usually believe? And second, how did it come about that the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that 'Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof'? The answers to these questions carry implications for our lives today, since at stake is the flash-point principle of the separation of church and state."
  –Washington Post*
• “There is a fierce custody battle going on out there for ownership of the Founding Fathers. Founding Faith strikes me as a major contribution to that debate, a sensible and sophisticated argument that the Founders’ religious convictions defy our current categories.”
  –Joseph Ellis, author of American Creation*

“Steven Waldman does a great job describing the nuances of the Founders’ beliefs and the balances they struck, thus rescuing them from those on both sides who would oversimplify their ideas.”
*–Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.

“This is a history every American should know, and Waldman masterfully tells it.”
–Jim Wallis, author of The Great Awakening

“Steven Waldman recovers the founders’ true beliefs with an insightful and truly original argument. It will change the way you think about the separation of church and state.”
–George Stephanopoulos, chief Washington correspondent, ABC News, and anchor of This Week

“Steve Waldman makes the strong case that the culture wars have distorted how and why we have religious freedom in America. Americans can be inspired by this story–the extraordinary birth story of freedom of religion.”
–William J. Bennett, author of America: The Last Best Hope

“An unusually well-balanced book on an unusually controversial subject. Not every reader will agree with Waldman that, of the Founding Fathers, James Madison’s conclusions about religion and society were best. But all should be grateful for the way Waldman replaces myths with facts, clarifies the complexity in making the Founders speak to present-day problems, and allows the Founders who differed with Madison a full and sympathetic hearing. An exceptionally fair, w…