Making religion safe for democracy : transformation from Hobbes to Tocqueville
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Bibliographic Information
Making religion safe for democracy : transformation from Hobbes to Tocqueville
Cambridge University Press, 2015
- : hardback
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-158) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Does the toleration of liberal democratic society mean that religious faiths are left substantively intact, so long as they respect the rights of others? Or do liberal principles presuppose a deeper transformation of religion? Does life in democratic society itself transform religion? In Making Religion Safe for Democracy, J. Judd Owen explores these questions by tracing a neglected strand of Enlightenment political thought that presents a surprisingly unified reinterpretation of Christianity by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Thomas Jefferson. Owen then turns to Alexis de Tocqueville's analysis of the effects of democracy on religion in the early United States. Tocqueville finds a religion transformed by democracy in a way that bears a striking resemblance to what the Enlightenment thinkers sought, while offering a fundamentally different interpretation of what is at stake in that transformation. Making Religion Safe for Democracy offers a novel framework for understanding the ambiguous status of religion in modern democratic society.
Table of Contents
- 1. A third way of religious freedom?: Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Backus, and the struggle for the American soul
- 2. Hobbes and the roots of religious indifference
- 3. Locke and the political theology of toleration
- 4. Tocqueville and the democratization of American religion.
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