Our Constitution the Way it Was
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Our Constitution the Way it Was
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Narrated by:
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David Smalley
About this listen
The constitution of the United States was intentionally created as a completely godless document.
In these transcripts of her American Atheist Radio programs, Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair tells us about Freedom of Religion in Colonial America, American Deism, Rewriting of History by Christians, The Christianity of our Founding as a Nation, Free thought in American Historical Documents, Free thought Organizations in the Early U.S., Thomas Paine - American Deist and Freethinker, Colonel Ethan Allen, James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, Jefferson's Idea of Religious Freedom, and Jefferson on Christianity.
Dr. O'Hair also presents two handwritten facsimiles of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in which the phrase "under God" is not present.
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-
Did America Have a Christian Founding?
- Separating Modern Myth from Historical Truth
- By: Mark David Hall
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 5 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
In this new audiobook, Hall makes the airtight case that America's Founders were not deists; that they did not create a "godless" Constitution; that even Jefferson and Madison did not want a high wall separating church and state; that most Founders believed the government should encourage Christianity; and that they embraced a robust understanding of religious liberty for biblical and theological reasons. In addition, Hall explains why and how the Founders' views are absolutely relevant today.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Yes.
- By Philip D. Larson on 02-04-20
By: Mark David Hall
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The Age of Reason
- By: Thomas Paine
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 500
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 431
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 435
Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology, published in three parts from 1794, was a best seller in America, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. Promoting a creator-God while advocating reason in the place of revelation, Paine’s controversial pamphlet caused his native British audience, fearing the results of the French Revolution, to receive it with more hostility than their American counterparts.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Amazed by the energy, originality & bravery
- By Darwin8u on 10-06-12
By: Thomas Paine
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Thomas Jefferson
- A Biography of Spirit and Flesh
- By: Thomas S. Kidd
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
Thomas Jefferson was arguably the most brilliant and inspiring political writer in American history. But the ethical realities of his personal life and political career did not live up to his soaring rhetoric. Indeed, three tensions defined Jefferson’s moral life: democracy versus slavery, republican virtue versus dissolute consumption, and veneration for Jesus versus skepticism about Christianity. In this book, Thomas S. Kidd tells the story of Jefferson’s ethical life through the lens of these tensions.
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3 out of 5 stars
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This version is the standard non in depth bio
- By Fred F on 03-28-24
By: Thomas S. Kidd
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Samuel Adams
- A Life
- By: Ira Stoll
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 205
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 150
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 148
Ira Stoll's fascinating biography not only restores this figure to his rightful place in history but portrays him as a man of God whose skepticism of a powerful central government, uncompromising support for freedom of the press, concern about the influence of money on elections, voluble love of liberty, and selfless endurance in a war for freedom has enormous relevance to Americans today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Not just a biography. Must-read American History!
- By scott bowlby on 01-15-11
By: Ira Stoll
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Common Sense
- By: Thomas Payne
- Narrated by: Mike Vendetti
- Length: 2 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
Read by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti, Common Sense is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775-76 that inspired people in the Thirteen Colonies to declare and fight for independence from Great Britain in the summer of 1776. The pamphlet explained the advantages of and the need for immediate independence in clear, simple language. It was published anonymously on January 10, 1776, at the beginning of the American Revolution and became an immediate sensation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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very funny
- By Drew on 03-13-17
By: Thomas Payne
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The Founding Myth
- Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American
- By: Andrew L. Seidel, Susan Jacoby - Foreword
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1,108
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 984
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Story5 out of 5 stars 976
Do "In God We Trust", the Declaration of Independence, and other historical "evidence" prove that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles? Are the Ten Commandments the basis for American law? A constitutional attorney dives into the debate about religion's role in America's founding.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Just 2 Issues
- By VIPER G on 09-01-19
By: Andrew L. Seidel, and others
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A History of Christianity
- By: Paul Johnson
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 28 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 90
First published in 1976, Paul Johnson's exceptional study of Christianity has been loved and widely hailed for its intensive research, writing, and magnitude. Weaving a great range of material, the scholar and author Johnson creates an ambitious panoramic overview of the evolution of the Western world since the founding of a little-known "Jesus sect".
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3 out of 5 stars
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Read Brant Pitre's the case for Jesus instead.
- By Catherine BFT on 05-08-17
By: Paul Johnson
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Reflections on the Revolution in France
- By: Edmund Burke
- Narrated by: Bernard Mayes
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 239
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 207
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Story4 out of 5 stars 201
This famous treatise began as a letter to a young French friend who asked Edmund Burke’s opinion on whether France’s new ruling class would succeed in creating a better order. Doubtless the friend expected a favorable reply, but Burke was suspicious of certain tendencies of the Revolution from the start and perceived that the revolutionaries were actually subverting the true "social order". Blending history with principle and graceful imagery with profound practical maxims, this book is one of the most influential political treatises in the history of the world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A good historical perspective
- By CMC on 08-30-14
By: Edmund Burke
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God of Liberty
- A Religious History of the American Revolution
- By: Thomas S. Kidd
- Narrated by: Mark Coffin
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
Before the Revolutionary War, America was a nation divided by different faiths. But when the war for independence sparked in 1776, colonists united under the banner of religious freedom. Evangelical frontiersmen and Deist intellectuals set aside their differences to defend a belief they shared, the right to worship freely. Inspiring an unlikely but powerful alliance, it was the idea of religious liberty that brought the colonists together in the battle against British tyranny.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The founding has a complicated religious history
- By Adam Shields on 03-24-16
By: Thomas S. Kidd
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Strange Gods
- A Secular History of Conversion
- By: Susan Jacoby
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 19 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
In this original and riveting exploration, Susan Jacoby argues that conversion - especially in the free American "religious marketplace" - is too often viewed only within the conventional and simplistic narrative of personal reinvention and divine grace. Instead, the author places conversions within a secular social context that has, at various times, included the force of a unified church and state, desire for upward economic mobility, and interreligious marriage.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Our own fabrications
- By David E. Felker on 01-03-17
By: Susan Jacoby
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Freethinkers
- A History of American Secularism
- By: Susan Jacoby
- Narrated by: Rich Miller
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 52
At 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. In impassioned, elegant prose, celebrated author Susan Jacoby traces more than 200 years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Essential history of free thought in America
- By Clark Savage on 11-27-17
By: Susan Jacoby
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Who Is the King in America?
- And Who Are the Counselors to the King?: An Overview of 6,000 Years of History & Why America Is Unique
- By: William J Federer
- Narrated by: William J. Federer
- Length: 4 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story5 out of 5 stars 68
From the invention of writing around 3,300 BC, the world has mostly been ruled by kings. Though called by different names: Pharaohs, Chieftains, Emperors, Caesars, Sultans, Khans, Maharajas, Monarchs, and Dictators, they act the same. Power, like gravity, concentrates into the hand of one person, who rewards his friends and punishes his enemies. In socialist and communist countries, too, though professing equality, they inevitably end up being ruled by dictators.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing book! Definitely a must read!
- By Ryan Kester on 08-09-21
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Forged in Faith
- How Faith Shaped the Birth of the Nation 1607-1776
- By: Rod Gragg
- Narrated by: Maurice England
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 54
The true drama of how faith motivated America's Founding Fathers, influenced the Declaration of Independence, and inspired the birth of the nation. Forged in Faith recounts how faith motivated Pilgrims, Puritans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, Catholics, and Anglicans alike in a unique and fascinating history of early America and the faith that forged a nation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Incredible must read.
- By Tim Patt on 07-29-21
By: Rod Gragg
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The Founders' Key
- The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It
- By: Dr. Larry Arnn
- Narrated by: Van Tracy
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 24
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 22
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Story5 out of 5 stars 22
Dr. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, reveals this integral unity of the Declaration and the Constitution. Together, they form the pillars upon which the liberties and rights of the American people stand. United, they have guided history's first self-governing nation, forming our government under certain universal and eternal principles. Unfortunately, the effort to redefine government to reflect "the changing and growing social order" has gone very far toward success.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Linking Declaration and Constitution.
- By Ed Bethune on 04-26-24
By: Dr. Larry Arnn
What listeners say about Our Constitution the Way it Was
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jeff Koeppen
- 01-15-20
The Truth Finally Comes Out
Our Constitution The Way It Was was published by the American Atheist Press in 1982 as a booklet to be handed out at the Twelfth Annual National American Atheist Convention in Washington, DC. Madalyn Murray O'Hair thought it would be nice to collect transcripts of her American Atheist Radio Series which dealt with the founding of our nation and some of the deists at the forefront of its founding and put publish them in a nice collection.
I found the most of the content to be fascinating and eye opening. I literally have never heard the non-Christian side of the stories related to the establishment of the United States and and the lives of the people who were instrumental in its forming. I feel like I was fed a load of bunk in the subject of US history (not just in Science class!) in Catholic School and in the conservative small town high school I'm looking forward to taking a deep dive in to this very subject when I read Andrew Seidel's (saw him speak in Minneapolis in 2019) comprehensive book The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American.
Some of the highlights of Madalyn's collection include chapters about: early United States freethought groups (there were many, surprisingly), Thomas Paine's life, Colonel Ethan Allen's life, how Christians rewrite history, and Thomas Jefferson's criticism of religion as a whole. I knew of the Jefferson bible but was surprised at some of his quotes and the scorn he received from believers.
With Christian nationalism on the rise and evangelicals now invading the White House regularly, the information contained in is little book from 1982 is more relevant than ever. I'm guessing Seidel will expand on and update this booklet's topics in his chunky take-down of Christian nationalism. Looking forward to it.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Courtney Foster
- 10-29-21
Must Read, Must Listen Wake up PPL
always good to hear factual truth and not the stuff we've been conditioned to understand and listen to
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Average Joe
- 01-17-18
Phenomenal!!!
What a great & in-depth study on the subject!
I couldn’t have asked for a better book!
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1 person found this helpful