Adam Jortner – författare
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4 produkter
4 produkter
A Promised Land
Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom
Inbunden, Engelska, 2024
355 kr
Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar
A new history that centers Judaism at the dawn of the United StatesJews played a critical role both in winning the American Revolution--fighting for the Patriot cause from Bunker Hill to Yorktown--and in defining the republic that was created from it. As the most visible non-Christian religion, Judaism was central to the debate over religious freedom in America at a critical juncture. During the war every city with a synagogue fell to the British-with the exception of Philadelphia, birthplace to the Declaration of Independence and a core of resistance. Jewish patriots throughout the colonies flocked to the city, where they re-founded the local synagogue as a distinctively American organization. After the war, Jews began to press for full citizenship in the hope that liberty would apply to everyone, and that the limits to freedom imposed on Jews in the Old World would be removed in the New. As Adam Jortner shows in this eye-opening account, the decision to extend citizenship to all religions was not a twentieth-century phenomenon prompted by immigration and Supreme Court rulings, but a debate the Founding generation itself had had-unambiguously deciding against the idea of nation defined exclusively by Christianity. Instead, the Founders, Jewish patriots, and their allies, sought and achieved the broadest possible definition of religious liberty, and the separation of church and state. A Promised Land sheds new light on this key struggle in early America and the driving forces behind it.
The Gods of Prophetstown
The Battle of Tippecanoe and the Holy War for the American Frontier
Inbunden, Engelska, 2012
364 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
It began with a total eclipse of the sun. In 1806, a Shawnee known as Lalawauthika (roughly meaning "Loudmouth"), proclaimed himself Tenskwatawa ("The Open Door"), a spiritual leader in direct contact with the Master of Life. Those who disbelieved him, he warned, "would see darkness come over the sun." Not long after, the sun went black. Ironically, Tenskwatawa's resulting prestige was greatly enhanced by his mortal enemy, governor of the Indiana Territory and future American president William Henry Harrison. If he truly is a prophet, Harrison publicly taunted, then let him produce a miracle. And Tenskwatawa did just that. In The Gods of Prophetstown, Adam Jortner provides a gripping account of the conflict between Tenskwatawa and Harrison, who finally collided in 1811 at a place called Tippecanoe. Though largely forgotten today, he writes, it determined the future of westward expansion and influenced the impending War of 1812. Jortner weaves together dual biographies of the opposing leaders. In the five years between the eclipse and the battle, Tenskwatawa used his spiritual leadership to forge a political pseudo-state with his twin brother Tecumseh. Harrison, meanwhile, built a power base in Indiana, rigging elections and maneuvering for higher position. Rejecting received wisdom, Jortner sees nothing as preordained--Native Americans were not inexorably falling toward dispossession and destruction. Deeply rooting his account in a generation of scholarship that has revolutionized Indian history, Jortner places the religious dimension of the struggle at the fore, recreating the spiritual landscapes trod by each side. The climactic battle, he writes, was as much a clash of gods as of men.Written with profound insight and narrative verve, The Gods of Prophetstown recaptures a forgotten turning point in American history in time for the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Tippecanoe.
562 kr
Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar
In the decades following the Revolution, the supernatural exploded across the American landscape—fabulous reports of healings, exorcisms, magic, and angels crossed the nation. Under First Amendment protections, new sects based on such miracles proliferated. At the same time, Enlightenment philosophers and American founders explicitly denied the possibility of supernatural events, dismissing them as deliberate falsehoods—and, therefore, efforts to suborn the state. Many feared that belief in the supernatural itself was a danger to democracy. In this way, miracles became a political problem and prompted violent responses in the religious communities of Prophetstown, Turtle Creek, and Nauvoo. In Blood from the Sky, Adam Jortner argues that the astonishing breadth and extent of American miracles and supernaturalism following American independence derived from Enlightenment ideas about proof and sensory evidence, offering a chance at certain belief in an uncertain religious climate. Jortner breaks new ground in explaining the rise of radical religion in antebellum America, revisiting questions of disenchantment, modernity, and religious belief in a history of astounding events that—as the early Americans would have said—needed to be seen to be believed.
261 kr
Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar
The emergence of the Mormon church is arguably the most radical event in American religious history. How and why did so many Americans flock to this new religion, and why did so many other Americans seek to silence or even destroy that movement?Winner of the MHA Best Book Award by the Mormon History AssociationMormonism exploded across America in 1830, and America exploded right back. By 1834, the new religion had been mocked, harassed, and finally expelled from its new settlements in Missouri. Why did this religion generate such anger? And what do these early conflicts say about our struggles with religious liberty today? In No Place for Saints, the first stand-alone history of the Mormon expulsion from Jackson County and the genesis of Mormonism, Adam Jortner chronicles how Latter-day Saints emerged and spread their faith—and how anti-Mormons tried to stop them. Early on, Jortner explains, anti-Mormonism thrived on gossip, conspiracies, and outright fables about what Mormons were up to. Anti-Mormons came to believe Mormons were a threat to democracy, and anyone who claimed revelation from God was an enemy of the people with no rights to citizenship. By 1833, Jackson County's anti-Mormons demanded all Saints leave the county. When Mormons refused—citing the First Amendment—the anti-Mormons attacked their homes, held their leaders at gunpoint, and performed one of America's most egregious acts of religious cleansing. From the beginnings of Mormonism in the 1820s to their expansion and expulsion in 1834, Jortner discusses many of the most prominent issues and events in Mormon history. He touches on the process of revelation, the relationship between magic and LDS practice, the rise of the priesthood, the questions surrounding Mormonism and African Americans, the internal struggles for leadership of the young church, and how American law shaped this American religion. Throughout, No Place for Saints shows how Mormonism—and the violent backlash against it—fundamentally reshaped the American religious and legal landscape. Ultimately, the book is a story of Jacksonian America, of how democracy can fail religious freedom, and a case study in popular politics as America entered a great age of religion and violence.