Religion in American History and Politics

These 25 primary documents trace some of the central themes in the long, complex story of religion and politics in American history. These are the first documents in a proposed online library that will present the rich variety of American religious experience and its intricate relationship to American life. 


Documents: 

1. John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630)

2. Laws, Rights, and Liberties Related to Religion in Early America (1610-1682)

3. Cotton Mather, A Man of Reason (1718) and Jonathan Edwards, A Divine and Supernatural Light (1734)

4. Jonathan Mayhew, A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-resistance to the Higher Powers (1750)

5. Excerpts from Founding Documents (1776-1798)

6. George Washington, Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island (1790)

7. John Quincy Adams, An Address…Celebrating the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1821)

8. Lyman Beecher, A Plea for the West (1835)

9. Edward Beecher, The Nature, Importance, and Means of Eminent Holiness Throughout the Church (1750)

10. Abraham Lincoln, The Temperance Address (1842)

11. Benjamin Morgan Palmer, “Baconianism and the Bible” (1852)

12. Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (1865)

13. Henry Ward Beecher, “The Moral Theory of Civil Liberty” (1869)

14. E.L. Youmans, “Herbert Spencer and the Doctrine of Evolution” (1874)

15. Dwight L. Moody, “On Being Born Again” (1877)

16. G. Stanley Hall, “Philosophy in the United States” (1879)

17. Jane Addams, “Religious Education and Contemporary Social Conditions” (1911)

18. A.C. Dixon, “The Bible at the Center of the Modern University” (1920)

19. Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” (1922)

20. J. Gresham Machen, “The Bible,” Christianity and Liberalism (1923)

21. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Address to the National Conference of Catholic Charities (1933)

22. Martin Luther King, “Can a Christian Be a Communist?” (1962)

23. Francis Schaeffer, “A Christian Manifesto” (1982)

24. Ronald Reagan, Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals (1983)

25. Barack Obama, Address at Cairo University (2009)

Appendix A: Study Questions

Appendix B: Suggested Reading