First Things RSS Feed - Brian Harvey https://www.firstthings.com/author/brian-harvey en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:57:23 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/brian-harvey 60 The Democratization of Science https://www.firstthings.com/article/2000/03/the-democratization-of-science https://www.firstthings.com/article/2000/03/the-democratization-of-science Wed, 01 Mar 2000 00:00:00 -0500
“I t is degrading to an American to take everything on trust, and even the young farmer and tradesman should scorn to surrender their right of judging either to lawyers or priests.” According to Nathan Hatch, professor of American religious history at the University of Notre Dame, this kind of populist sentiment-expressed in 1803 by the New England politician and polemicist Benjamin Austin, Jr.-represents the salient contribution of American religion to the formation of our cultural ethos. “The democratic revolution of the early republic sent external religious authority into headlong retreat,” writes Hatch in The Democratization of American Christianity

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