Jacoby contends that it's one of 'the great unresolved paradoxes' that religion occupies such an important place in a nation founded on separation of church and state. Is America really one nation under God? Not according to Pulitzer Prize finalist Jacoby (Wild Justice, etc.), who argues that it is America's secularist 'freethinkers' who formed the bedrock upon which our nation was built. It is they, Jacoby shows, who have led the struggle to uphold the combination of secular government and religious liberty that is the glory of the American system. Rich with such iconic figures as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Clarence Darrow-as well as once-famous secularists such as Robert Green Ingersoll, 'the Great Agnostic'- Freethinkers restores to history generations of dedicated humanists. Moving from nineteenth-century abolitionism and suffragism through the twentieth century's civil liberties, civil rights, and feminist movements, Freethinkers illuminates the neglected accomplishments of secularists who, allied with liberal and tolerant religious believers, have stood at the forefront of the battle for reforms opposed by reactionary forces in the past and today. In impassioned, elegant prose, celebrated author Susan Jacoby paints a striking portrait of more than two hundred years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution. An authoritative history of the vital role of secularist thinkers and activists in the United States, from a writer of 'fierce intelligence and nimble, unfettered imagination' ( The New York Times)Īt a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers offers a powerful defense of the secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock of human reason.

Freethinkers susan jacoby