Today, Americans believe that the early colonists came to the New World in search of religious liberty. What we often forget is that they wanted religious liberty for themselves, not for those who held other views that they rejected and detested. Yet, by the mid-18th century, the colonists agreed that everyone possessed a sovereign right of conscience. How did this change develop? In Beyond Belief, Beyond Conscience, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jack Rakove tracks the unique course of religious freedom in America. He finds that, as denominations and sects multiplied, Americans became much more tolerant of the free expression of rival religious beliefs. During the Revolutionary era, he explains, most of the new states moved to disestablish churches and to give constitutional recognition to rights of conscience. These two developments explain why religious freedom originally represented the most radical right of all. No other right placed greater importance on the moral autonomy of individuals, or better illustrated how the authority of government could be limited by denying the state authority to act. Together, these developments made possible the great revival of religion in 19th-century America. As Rakove explains, America's intense religiosity eventually created a new set of problems for mapping the relationship between church and state. He goes on to examine some of our contemporary controversies over church and state not from the vantage point of legal doctrine, but of the deeper history that gave the U.S. its own approach to religious freedom. In this book, he tells the story of how American ideas of religious toleration and free exercise evolved over time, and why questions of church and state still vex us.

In Beyond Belief, Beyond Conscience, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jack Rakove makes broad claims about how religious freedom affects us. He contrasts the radical course of American developments with the more complicated ways in which Europeans tried to promote religious tolerance. He argues that both freedom of conscience and disestablishment were critical constitutional principles whose significance we no longer fully appreciate. Rakove explains why Jefferson's and Madison's understanding of these concepts were influential to their constitutional thinking. And he examines some of our contemporary controversies over church and state from the vantage point, not of legal doctrine, but of the deeper history that gave the U.S. its unique approach to religious freedom.

This book considers how the modern concept of “conscience” turns the historic commitment on its head, in a way that underlies the decadence of modern society. Steven D. Smith’s books are always anticipated with great interest by scholars, jurists, and citizens who see his work on foundational questions surrounding law and religion as shaping the debate in profound ways. Now, in The Disintegrating Conscience and the Decline of Modernity, Smith takes as his starting point Jacques Barzun’s provocative assertion that “the modern era” is coming to an end. Smith considers the question of decline by focusing on a single theme—conscience—that has been central to much of what has happened in Western politics, law, and religion over the past half-millennium. Rather than attempting to follow that theme step-by-step through five hundred years, the book adopts an episodic and dramatic approach by focusing on three main figures and particularly portentous episodes: first, Thomas More’s execution for his conscientious refusal to take an oath mandated by Henry VIII; second, James Madison’s contribution to Virginia law in removing the proposed requirement of religious toleration in favor of freedom of conscience; and, third, William Brennan’s pledge to separate his religious faith from his performance as a Supreme Court justice. These three episodes, Smith suggests, reflect in microcosm decisive turning points at which Western civilization changed from what it had been in premodern times to what it is today. A commitment to conscience, Smith argues, has been a central and in some ways defining feature of modern Western civilization, and yet in a crucial sense conscience in the time of Brennan and today has come to mean almost the opposite of what it meant to Thomas More. By scrutinizing these men and episodes, the book seeks to illuminate subtle but transformative changes in the commitment to conscience—changes that helped to bring Thomas More’s world to an end and that may also be contributing to the disintegration of (per Barzun) “the modern era.”

This book uncovers how human rights gained meaning and power for Americans in the 1940s, the 1970s and today.

In The Religion Clauses, Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman examine the extremely controversial issue of the relationship between religion and government. They argue for a separation of church and state. To the greatest extent possible, the government should remain secular. At the same, time they contend that religion should not provide a basis for an exemptions from general laws, such as those prohibiting discrimination or requiring the provision of services.

Introduction -- The conscience problem and Catholic doctrine -- Political origins : totalitarianism, world war, and mass conscription -- The State's paperwork and the Catholic Peace Fellowship -- Sex, conscience and the American Catholic Church 1968 -- Psychology and the self -- The conscience lobby -- Beyond the Catholic Church.

Learn 14 guiding principles to help liberater the mind from victim consciousness, by doing so let go of any resistance to life and stop fighting the future and agonizing over the past.

Beyond Belief: Racist, Sexist, Rude, Crude and Dishonest The Golden Age of Madison Avenue -- Charles Saatchi Charles Saatchi's selection of the advertising created before the industry had a conscience demonstrates the radical change in attitudes to women, race, tobacco, size and drugs and much more. Saatchi guides the reader through its seven controversial sections in his inimitable style. 'Although many of the adverts selected are alarming, they present an important portrait of society in the 1940s and 50s -- and thankfully demonstrate that our world today has taken so many steps forward.' AUTHOR: Charles Saatchi has been one of the moving forces of the modern age, one of the most significant figures in global advertising and one of the most influential collectors of contemporary art, while contradictorily remaining a reclusive, even elusive figure.

As a cardiologist, Pim van Lommel was struck by the number of his patients who claimed to have near-death experiences as a result of their heart attacks. As a scientist, this was difficult for him to accept: Wouldn't it be scientifically irresponsible of him to ignore the evidence of these stories? Faced with this dilemma, van Lommel decided to design a research study to investigate the phenomenon under the controlled environment of a cluster of hospitals with a medically trained staff. For more than twenty years van Lommel systematically studied such near-death experiences in a wide variety of hospital patients who survived a cardiac arrest. In 2001, he and his fellow researchers published his study on near-death experiences in the renowned medical journal The Lancet. The article caused an international sensation as it was the first scientifically rigorous study of this phenomenon. Now available for the first time in English, van Lommel offers an in-depth presentation of his results and theories in this book that has already sold over 125,000 copies in Europe. Van Lommel provides scientific evidence that the near-death phenomenon is an authentic experience that cannot be attributed to imagination, psychosis, or oxygen deprivation. He further reveals that after such a profound experience, most patients' personalities undergo a permanent change. In van Lommel's opinion, the current views on the relationship between the brain and consciousness held by most physicians, philosophers, and psychologists are too narrow for a proper understanding of the phenomenon. In Consciousness Beyond Life, van Lommel shows that our consciousness does not always coincide with brain functions and that, remarkably and significantly, consciousness can even be experienced separate from the body.