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During the Gilded Age, which saw the dawn of America's enduring culture wars, Robert Green Ingersoll was known as "the Great Agnostic." The nation's most famous orator, he raised his voice on behalf of Enlightenment reason, secularism, and the separation of church and state with a vigor unmatched since America's revolutionary generation. When he died in 1899, even his religious enemies acknowledged that he might have aspired to the U.S. presidency had he been willing to mask his opposition to religion. To the question that retains its controversial power today-was the United States founded as a Christian nation?-Ingersoll answered an emphatic no.In this provocative biography, Susan Jacoby, the author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, restores Ingersoll to his rightful place in an American intellectual tradition extending from Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine to the current generation of "new atheists." Jacoby illuminates the ways in which America's often-denigrated and forgotten secular history encompasses issues, ranging from women's rights to evolution, as potent and divisive today as they were in Ingersoll's time. Ingersoll emerges in this portrait as one of the indispensable public figures who keep an alternative version of history alive. He devoted his life to that greatest secular idea of all-liberty of conscience belonging to the religious and nonreligious alike.

Freethinkers --- Free thinkers --- Rationalists --- History. --- Ingersoll, Robert Green, --- Ingersoll, Robert G.

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The first comprehensive biography of Elihu Palmer tells the life story of a freethinker who was at the heart of the early United States' protracted contest over religious freedom and free speech.When the United States was new, a lapsed minister named Elihu Palmer shared with his fellow Americans the radical idea that virtue required no religious foundation. A better source for morality, he said, could be found in the natural world: the interconnected web of life that inspired compassion for all living things. Religions that deny these universal connections should be discarded, he insisted. For this, his Christian critics denounced him as a heretic whose ideas endangered the country.Although his publications and speaking tours made him one of the most infamous American freethinkers in his day, Elihu Palmer has been largely forgotten. No cache of his personal papers exists and his book has been long out of print. Yet his story merits telling, Kirsten Fischer argues, and not only for the dramatic account of a man who lost his eyesight before the age of thirty and still became a book author, newspaper editor, and itinerant public speaker. Even more intriguing is his encounter with a cosmology that envisioned the universe as interconnected, alive with sensation, and everywhere infused with a divine life force.Palmer's "heresy" tested the nation's recently proclaimed commitment to freedom of religion and of speech. In this he was not alone. Fischer reveals that Palmer engaged in person and in print with an array of freethinkers—some famous, others now obscure. The flourishing of diverse religious opinion struck some of his contemporaries as foundational to a healthy democracy while others believed that only a strong Christian faith could support democratic self-governance. This first comprehensive biography of Palmer draws on extensive archival research to tell the life story of a freethinker who was at the heart of the new nation's protracted contest over religious freedom and free speech—a debate that continues to resonate today.

Deism --- Freethinkers --- Free thinkers --- Rationalists --- Rationalism --- Palmer, Elihu, --- A Fourth of July Oration. --- American Enlightenment. --- Deistical Society. --- First Amendment. --- Freedom of speech. --- Prospect, or View of the Modern World. --- The Principles of Nature. --- The Temple of Reason. --- Vitalism.

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Faith in literature. --- Theology in literature. --- Religion in literature. --- Rationalism in literature. --- Belief and doubt in literature. --- Verse satire, American --- Christian poetry, American --- Freethinkers --- Christianity and literature --- Religion in drama --- Religion in poetry --- American verse satire --- American poetry --- Free thinkers --- Rationalists --- Literature and Christianity --- Literature --- Christian literature --- History and criticism. --- History --- Chauncy, Charles, --- Dwight, Timothy, --- In literature. --- T. W., --- W., T., --- Chauncey, Charles,

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"This is an improbable but true adventure story written by an 18th century liberal who found himself to be the owner of an entire town in rural southern Indiana. The town, ironically enough named "Story", is on the northern fringe of hill country, an area settled primarily by Germans who built towns and breweries along the mighty Ohio River, and Scotch-Irish, who pioneered inland, establishing a church at every crossroad, and a still in every holler. Topographically, ethnically, and culturally, this area sets itself apart from the rest of Indiana. It is a land of churches, caves, limestone quarries, manufactured homes, Harley Davidson rallies, Dixie flags, meth labs and gun stores, and it is called Kentuckiana."--Provided by publisher.

Brown County (Ind.) --- Indiana --- Brown Co., Ind. --- State of Indiana --- Hoosier State --- Indiǣna --- إنديانا --- Indīyāna --- Indiana suyu --- Штат Індыяна --- Shtat Indyi︠a︡na --- Індыяна --- Indyi︠a︡na --- Индиана --- Índíʼyéenah Hahoodzo --- Ιντιάνα --- Intiana --- Πολιτεία της Ιντιάνα --- Politeia tēs Intiana --- Estado de Indiana --- Indianio --- Stato de Indianio --- Indăn --- ʻInikiana --- Индианæ --- Indianæ --- אינדיאנה --- Indiʼanah --- Indiana Territory --- Social conditions --- Rural conditions --- Social life and customs --- Hofstetter, Richard R., --- Story Inn (Brown County, Ind.) --- Hofstetter, Rick, --- United States --- Rural population --- Freethinkers --- American wit and humor --- Politics and government --- Attitudes. --- American literature --- Free thinkers --- Rationalists --- Agricultural population --- Farm population --- Population --- Sociology, Rural