Theodore Roosevelt
Preaching from the Bully Pulpit (Spiritual Lives)
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Theodore Roosevelt
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Narrated by:
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Bob Souer
About this listen
Theodore Roosevelt is well-known as a rancher, hunter, naturalist, soldier, historian, explorer, and statesman. His visage is etched on Mount Rushmore - alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln - as a symbol of his vast and consequential legacy. While Roosevelt's life has been written about from many angles, no modern book probes deeply into his engagement with religious beliefs, practices, and controversies despite his lifelong church attendance and commentary on religious issues. Theodore Roosevelt: Preaching from the Bully Pulpit traces Roosevelt's personal religious odyssey from youthful faith and pious devotion to a sincere but more detached adult faith.
Benjamin J. Wetzel presents the president as a champion of the separation of church and state, a defender of religious ecumenism, and a "preacher" who used his "bully pulpit" to preach morality using the language of the King James Bible. Contextualizing Roosevelt in the American religious world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Wetzel shows how religious groups interpreted the famous Rough Rider and how he catered to, rebuked, and interacted with various religious constituencies. Based in large part on personal correspondence and unpublished archival materials, this book offers a new interpretation of an extremely significant historical figure.
©2021 Benjamin J. Wetzel (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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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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A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards
- By: George M. Marsden
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 148
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 124
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 122
Jonathan Edwards is one of the most extraordinary figures in American history. Arguably the most brilliant theologian ever born on American soil, Edwards (1703 - 1758) was also a pastor, a renowned preacher, a missionary to the Native Americans, a biographer, a college president, a philosopher, a loving husband, and the father of 11 children.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Terrific book and well narrated
- By SBT on 01-22-11
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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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Lincoln in Private
- What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President
- By: Ronald C. White
- Narrated by: Ronald C. White
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story5 out of 5 stars 42
A deeply private man, shut off even to those who worked closely with him, Abraham Lincoln often captured “his best thoughts", as he called them, in short notes to himself. He would work out his personal stances on the biggest issues of the day, never expecting anyone to see these pieces of writing, which he’d then keep close at hand, in desk drawers and even in his top hat. The profound importance of these notes has been overlooked, because the originals are scattered across several different archives and have never before been brought together and examined as a coherent whole.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Good One--Highly Recommend
- By Jeffy on 04-18-23
By: Ronald C. White
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The Faiths of the Founding Fathers
- By: David L. Holmes
- Narrated by: C. James Moore
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4 out of 5 stars 54
In this compact audiobook, David L. Holmes offers a clear, concise and illuminating look at the spiritual beliefs of our founding fathers. He begins with an informative account of the religious culture of the late colonial era, surveying the religious groups in each colony. In particular, he sheds light on the various forms of deism that flourished in America, highlighting the profound influence this intellectual movement had on the founding generation.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Compelling but deism oversold
- By Thomas Gordon on 06-23-19
By: David L. Holmes
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First Principles
- What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country
- By: Thomas E. Ricks
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 704
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 594
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 590
On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his mind: What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation's founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders' thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works—among them the Iliad, Plutarch's Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Excellent book, opinionated epilogue.
- By Noetic Seeker on 01-23-21
By: Thomas E. Ricks
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The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton
- By: Andrew Porwancher
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
In The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Porwancher debunks a string of myths about the origins of this founding father to arrive at a startling conclusion: Hamilton, in all likelihood, was born and raised Jewish. For more than two centuries, his youth in the Caribbean has remained shrouded in mystery. Hamilton himself wanted it that way, and most biographers have simply assumed he had a Christian boyhood. With a detective's persistence and a historian's rigor, Porwancher upends that assumption.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Anti-Semitism and Religious Liberty
- By Detailed Shopper on 12-07-23
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The Evangelicals
- The Struggle to Shape America
- By: Frances FitzGerald
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 25 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 346
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 301
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 293
This groundbreaking book from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Frances FitzGerald is the first to tell the powerful, dramatic story of the Evangelical movement in America - from the Puritan era to the 2016 presidential election. Evangelicals have, in many ways, defined the nation. They have shaped our culture and our politics. Frances FitzGerald's narrative of this distinctively American movement is a major work of history, piecing together the centuries-long story for the first time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book
- By Gary LA on 12-27-17
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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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Kingdom of Nauvoo
- The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier
- By: Benjamin E. Park
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 241
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 215
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 214
Compared to the Puritans, Mormons have rarely gotten their due, often treated as fringe cultists or marginalized polygamists unworthy of serious examination. In Kingdom of Nauvoo, Benjamin E. Park excavates the brief, tragic life of a lost Mormon city, demonstrating that the Mormons are essential to understanding American history writ large. Using newly accessible sources, Park re-creates the Mormons' 1839 flight from Missouri to Illinois.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Can't get over "Nauvoo" pronunciation
- By Emily Christensen on 03-10-20
By: Benjamin E. Park
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Abe
- Abraham Lincoln in His Times
- By: David S. Reynolds
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 33 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 212
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 179
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 176
Abraham Lincoln did not come out of nowhere. But if he was shaped by his times, he also managed at his life's fateful hour to shape them to an extent few could have foreseen. Ultimately, this is the great drama that astonishes us still, and that Abe brings to fresh and vivid life. The measure of that life will always be part of our American education.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Cultural History is not a biography
- By Marc M. Sager on 11-09-20
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The Chosen Wars
- By: Steven R. Weisman
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
The Chosen Wars tells the dramatic story of how Judaism redefined itself in America in the 18th and 19th centuries - the personalities that fought each other and shaped its evolution and, importantly, the force of the American dynamic that prevailed over an ancient religion. Determined to take their places as equals in the young nation, American Jews rejected identity as a separate nation and embraced a secular America. Judaism became an American religion.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A History of the Reform Movement
- By E. B. Weinberg on 08-24-18
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The Problem of Democracy
- The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality
- By: Nancy Isenberg, Andrew Burstein
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 22 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 42
John and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth-tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not seek popularity (it showed). They lamented the fact that hero worship in America substituted idolatry for results; and they made it clear that they were talking about Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. When John Adams succeeded George Washington as President, his son had already followed him into public service and was stationed in Europe as a diplomat.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very insightful and rewarding adding understanding
- By William on 05-12-19
By: Nancy Isenberg, and others
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The Soul of America
- The Battle for Our Better Angels
- By: Jon Meacham
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Jon Meacham
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 5,450
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4,767
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 4,734
Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and LBJ, and illuminating the courage of influential citizen activists and civil rights pioneers, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. Each of these dramatic hours have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Thanks! I needed this!
- By Kindle Customer on 05-29-18
By: Jon Meacham
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We the Fallen People
- The Founders and the Future of American Democracy
- By: Robert Tracy McKenzie
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
We the Fallen People presents a close look at the ideas of human nature to be found in the history of American democratic thought. McKenzie, following C. S. Lewis, claims there are only two reasons to believe in majority rule: because we have confidence in human nature - or because we don't. The Founders subscribed to the biblical principle that humans are fallen and their virtue is always doubtful, and they wrote the US Constitution to frame a republic intended to handle our weaknesses.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Thoughtful reflection and historical perspective, but ultimately no easy answer
- By Brandon on 03-28-23
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A Pope and a President
- John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century
- By: Paul Kengor
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
- Length: 23 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 320
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 279
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Story5 out of 5 stars 279
Even as historians credit Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II with hastening the end of the Cold War, they have failed to recognize the depth or significance of the bond that developed between the two leaders. cclaimed scholar and best-selling author Paul Kengor changes that. In this fascinating book, he reveals a singular bond - which included a spiritual connection between the Catholic pope and the Protestant president - that drove the two men to confront what they knew to be the great evil of the 20th century: Soviet communism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A wonderful account of two amazing lives and their impact on us all!
- By Lesia Petrizio on 01-25-18
By: Paul Kengor