ch 6 notes

difference between republic and democracy

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-republic-and-a-democracy.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic

Gilder Lehrman Institute

http://www.class.uh.edu/gl/contents.htm

Unit 2 Revolution and The New Nation

Issue 5. Did the American Revolution Produce a Christian Nation?

    YES: Nathan O. Hatch, from ?The Democratization of Christianity and the Character of American Politics,? in Mark A. Noll, ed., Religion and American Politics (Oxford University Press, 1990)

    NO: Jon Butler, from ?Why Revolutionary America Wasn?t a `Christian Nation?,? in James H. Hutson, ed., Religion and the New Republic: Faith in the Founding of America (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000)

    Nathan Hatch argues that by eroding traditional appeals to authority and expanding the number of people who believed they were competent to think for themselves about freedom, equality, and representation, the American Revolution led to an expansion of evangelical Christianity that reinforced the democratic impulses of the new society. Jon Butler insists that men and women seldom referred to America as a ?Christian nation? between 1760 and 1790 and that even though Christianity was important, most Americans opposed a Christian national identity enforced by law or governmental action. 



Issue 6. Were the Founding Fathers Democratic Reformers?

    YES: John P. Roche, from ?The Founding Fathers: A Reform Caucus in Action,? American Political Science Review (December 1961)

    NO: Howard Zinn, from A People?s History of the United States (Harper Collins, 1999)

    Political scientist John P. Roche asserts that the Founding Fathers were not only revolutionaries but also superb democratic politicians who created a constitution that supported the needs of the nation and at the same time was acceptable to the people. According to radical historian Howard Zinn, the Founding Fathers were an elite group of northern money interests and southern slaveholders who used Shay?s Rebellion in Massachusetts as a pretext to create a strong central government, which protected the property rights of the rich to the exclusion of slaves, Indians, and non-property-holding whites.