Most Americans don't know that God is not mentioned in the Constitution. Jacoby talks about this briefly in her Beliefnet interview:Ī secular government was developed to protect the rights of religious minorities. Baptists and Congregationalists were, therefore, key players in ensuring disestablishment, first in Virginia, and then nationally. The evangelicals wanted to keep religious 'tests' as well as any references to God out of the Constitution to protect their freedom to organize as well as proselytize. constitution - Thomas Jefferson, James Madison. One of the most important benefits of Jacoby's argument about the Revolutionary period is the way she links the Evangelical Protestants (many of them southerners) with the elite freethinkers who were responsible for many of the signature features of the U.S. So far, I've read great chapters on the revolutionary period, Thomas Paine (who was more radical in his beliefs and in the manner of his life than I'd ever imagined), as well as Abraham Lincoln. The arguments about secularism aren't always convincing on every point, but the research she's done is great - it fills in many gaps in my (admittedly paltry) knowledge of these chapters in American history. I'm only about a third of the way through it, but so far I'm enjoying it, and learning a lot. I'm finally reading Susan Jacoby's Freethinkers, a book that was scheduled to come out in March, but which for some reason I didn't find in the bookstore until yesterday. ( Robert Ingersoll, American secularist quoted in Susan Jacoby's Freethinkers) It depends upon realities, upon demonstrations and its end and aim is to make this world better every day-to do away with poverty and crime, and to cover the world with happy and contented homes.

Secularism has no 'castles in Spain.' It has no glorified fog. Secularism teaches us to be just here and now. Secularism teaches us to be good here and now.

Freethinkers susan jacoby