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Home > Free Summer Institutes > Previous Institutes > Sources of the American Regime (Summer 2006)

Sources of the American Regime
Sunday, July 30, 2006 to Friday, August 4, 2006
Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio

What kind of a country is America? Some say it is a Biblical nation whose founding principles come from divine revelation. Others claim it is a secular society rooted in Enlightenment rationalism. Who's right? Or is it somehow both? The answer lies, of course, in how America's Founders understood their own principles. But those Founders, by their own admission, drew on previous sources even as they created a "new order of the ages". Among the most prominent sources shaping the regime at the time of the Founding were the Bible and the political thought of John Locke. To know if our Founding principles were Lockean or Biblical, we need to understand something of the political teaching of the Bible and John Locke. We will do that by studying selections from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, as well as Locke's view of politics and Biblical religion in A Letter Concerning Toleration, and his larger political principles outlined in the famous Second Treatise of Government.

Instructor: Jeffrey Sikkenga is Associate Professor of Political Science at Ashland University and co-editor of History of American Political Thought.


 

         
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