You should be able to write a good essay on Wills by studying the following questions.

No later than December 5 submit a five-page essay on a question to be provided.

Introduction

1. What is the relationship between the Enlightenment and separation of church and state?
2. Has separation helped or hurt religion in the United States?
3. How do Enlightened religion and Evangelicalism differ?
4. What was the dominant religious culture in American during the colonial period?
5. What was Puritanism and how is it still in our bones?
6. Has church membership as a percentage of population increased or decreased from 1776 to the present?
7. What does Wills mean by "Though Evangelicals have the greatest numbers in America, we remain an Enlightened nation?"

1. Mary Dyer Must Die

1. Did colonists come to America to establish religious freedom or to practice their particular faith?
2. What are the Covenant of Grace and the Covenant of Works?
3. In what way did Puritans believe that tolerance was sedition? Why did they believe that Oliver Cromwell sold out the cause of Reform?
4. Why did Charles II threaten to repeal the charter of Massachusetts in 1662?
5. What does Wills mean in writing, "Tolerance was the accomplishment of kings"?
6. Did John Winthrop and Cotton Mather promote theocracy?
7. Who were Antinomians?
8. Were Quakers deliberately subversive of political as well as religious authority?
9. Why do those who adhere to ultra-supernaturalism find it difficult to separate church and state?
10. How is the belief in the end of time related to the notion of America's mission?

2. The Puritan Psyche

1. Why did Puritans consider proselytizing an act of self-defense as well as charity?
2. How did Puritans treat Muslims, Jews, Africans, Indians, Catholics, and other Protestants?

3. The Puritan Consciences

1. How did "conversion" affect a Puritan's attitudes toward individualism and communitarianism? See also, pp. 78-82.
2. How did the antinomian controversy affect the politics of the Massachusetts Bay Colony?
3. How did the controversy over infant baptism and extended baptism (the Halfway Covenant) affect relationship among congregations and generations? What were some other halfway measures of Puritanism (e.g., constitutionalism and theocracy)?

4. The Puritan Intellect

1. Why were Puritan preachers considered to be highly literate but spoke and dressed in "plain style"?
2. Why were Harvard and Yale established? What Harvard heterodoxy did Yale rebel against to maintain orthodoxy?
3. What was the paradox of the Puritan intellect?
4. In what way are do political campaigns resemble religious revivals?
5. How has the Puritan belief that they are a chosen people influenced American politics?
6. Is it unpatriotic to oppose "rugged individualism"? Why do many conservatives support Herbert Spencer's Social Darwinism while opposing Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species?

5. Precursors: Samuel Sewall, Roger Williams

1. What were the harbingers of Enlightenment in 17th Century America?
2. How could the judge of the Salem witch trials, Samuel Sewall, be considered a harbinger of Enlightenment?
3. What did Williams mean by his garden-wilderness argument? How does this make him close to the Deists?
4. Why is Jefferson a true son of the Enlightenment, while Williams is only a precursor?

6. Spur to Enlightenment: The Great Awakening

1. In what way was Calvinist Jonathan Edwards a great liberal? How is it that Perry Millier can claim that Edwards, the most famous fire-and-brimstone preacher, reduced hell to a footnote?
2. In what way did the Awakening lead to a decline in Evangelicalism and a spur to the Enlightenment?
3. Are emotional religious paroxysms more authentic than staid rituals?
4. How did the clash between orthodox and heterodox lead to the founding of colleges in early America?
5. Can you have joy without others having to suffer?
6. Do you prefer a spirituality of the head or of the heart?

7. Against the Awakening

1. How did Calvinists and Arminians differ?
2. What was Latitudinarianism?
3. Why did the French Revolution cause a reaction against Enlightenment?

8. Quakers

1. In what way were Quakers enlightened, populist, and egalitarian?
2. Do you admire Lay, Woolman, or Benezet? Why or why not?

9. Deists

1. In what way were Paine, Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Franklin, and Hamilton Deists?
2. Was Enlightened religion a blessing to America?
3. What were failings of the American Enlightenment?

10. Beyond Tolerance

1. What is the difference between top-down and bottom-up religious freedom?
2. What is the logic of establishing a religion? In this view why is dissent unpatriotic?
3. Does atheism lead to anarchy?
4. How does Locke define state and church?
5. Are laws against same-sex marriage to prevent a civil injury or a religious error?
6. What does Locke say one should do if the civil authority commands one to break a religious tenet?
7. How did Jefferson go on from Locke?

11. Jefferson's Statute

1. Was Jefferson intent on protecting the state from religion or religion from the state?
2. Did Jefferson believe there was a true religion? How did he believe that freedom for all religions would benefit "our religion"?
3. Is Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists anti-clerical or an expression of religious freedom?

12. Madison's Remonstrance

1. Is an ecclesiastical establishment necessary or even desirable to support a civil society?
2. How does tolerance differ from a natural right?
3. Should religion be entirely outside the cognizance of government?
4. How would Madison have decided Wisconsin v. Yoder 406 U.S. 205 (1972) and Lyng v. NICPA 485 U.S. 439 (1988)?
5. Does Madison write that government should settle disputes between one religion and another?
6. Does Madison argue that justice is a product of majority rule?
7. Did Madison favor freedom from religion or freedom of religion?
8. Should the government referee disputes between different religious sects? What does Madison say?
9. Should the issue be settled by majority rule?
10. Why does the Declaration of Independence mention God, but the Constitution does not? Was the Constitution godless?
11. Was excluding a bill of rights from the original Constitution fundamental to the political theory of the Framers?

13. First Amendment

1. Why is war a time of inflamed religiosity?
2. Why was Madison initially opposed to the First Amendment?
3. Was the First Amendment intended to protect states' power to have an established religion?
4. Does the establishment of religion prevent free exercise of religion?

14. Madison's Separation

1. Describe Madison's Prayer Proclamation during the War of 1812? How does it differ from prayers for the War in Iraq?
2. Do you agree or disagree with Madison's view of chaplains for Congress, the armed forces, and the University of Virginia?
3. Is there anything wrong with the government protecting a church's property?
4. Why is religion more vigorous in the U.S. where there is no established church than in Europe where there is an establishment?

15. Schism in New England

1. According to Isaiah Berlin, how does Romanticism view the origin of values? What is Romanticism?
2. How did the separation of Unitarians from Congregationalists lead to a transition to Transcendentalism?
3. How did Baker v. Vales (1820) lead to state involvement in church doctrine? Is this good or not?

16. Emersonians

1. In what way did Transcendentalism become the American religion of the 19th Century?
2. How was Transcendentalism indebted to both Puritanism and Asian thought?
3. Compare Transcendentalism and Congregationalism.
4. Why did Transcendentalists even transcend politics?
5. How can Emerson be a hero to the political right and to he political left?

17. The Second Great Awakening

1. What accounted for the growth of churches prior to the Civil War?
2. Why was Methodism so popular?
3. What is the significance of black churches?
4. How did religious revivals and camp meetings set styles of political campaigning?
5. What was the relationship between democracy and evangelicalism during the 19th Century?
6. Consider Tocqueville's comment on the Romantics' yearning with Westen's advice on connecting neural networks in politics.
7. What does Wills mean by laissez-faire and social bonding partly converged?
8. What was the holiness movement?
9. How did politics affect the revivals?

18. Schisms over Slavery

1. What is the political significance of the differences between postmillenial and premillenial eschatology?
2. How did slavery and aboltionism affect religion and politics in the U.S.?
3. Why did religious leaders in the South support slavery?

19.God of Battles

1. How did southern preachers defend slavery?
2. How was Jefferson blamed for secession?
3. Why did northern theologian Horace Bushnell claim there had to be a bloody Civil War?
4. Was Lincoln influenced by his head or heart, by Evangelical or Transcendentalist traditions?

20. Religion in the Golden Age

1. Explain the Comstock Law of 1873.
2. Was Dwight L. Moody a friend of the worker or of the boss? Was he worldly or other-worldly?

21. Second-Coming Theology

1. Was Moody a fundamentalist?
2. Who were William Miller's descendants?
3. Who was John Nelson Darby and why does Wills write that he has had a deeper impact on American theology than anyone else?
4. What are the seven dispensations outlined by Cyrus Scofield?
5. What was the Niagra Creed?
6. What is the difference between moral questions and social problems?
7. Agree or disagree that without millenarianism there would not have been a Moral Majority.

22. Second-Coming Politics

1. Criticize the common view that evangelicals withdrew from politics after the Scopes trial in 1925.
2. Why did premillennialists resist Christian liberalism and the Social Gospel?
3. Why were premillennialists among the earliest supporters of a restored homeland for the Jews? Likewise, why is the Religious Right attached to the state of Israel today?
4. How could fundamentalist support Zionism and still accept the forged slanders of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"?
5. Why do dispensationalists oppose efforts to control proliferation of nuclear weapons?
6. Compare Puritan, Enlightenment, and Dispensationalist views of America.

23.The Social Gospel

1. Compare premillenialism and populism with the Social Gospel and progressivism.
2. Are strikes by organized labor an unChristian form of coercion?
3. Compare the ideas of Walter Rauschenbusch and Russell H. Conwell.
4. Is poverty a sin? An individual sin or a social sin?
5. What is America's Gospel of Empire?
6. How did Mark Twain describe the Philippine War?

24. Evangelicals Riding High

1. Should churches be allowed to contribute funds to political campaigns such as Prohibition?
2. How did Billy Sunday and other evangelists blunt efforts at social reform? Why?
3. Are Christianity and patriotism synonymous?

25. Evangelicals Brought Low

1. Was it proper for a Methodist bishop to testify against the confirmation of Brandeis to be a member of the Supreme Court and to campaign against the election of Smith for president?

26. Religion in a Radical Time

1. Was Father Coughlin's support of FDR justified?
2. What are Thomist theories of social justice?
3. Should the U.S. have diplomatic relations with the Vatican?
4. Why was reaction to the Great Depression more ascetic than revivalistic?
5. Evaluate the morals clause in employment contracts.
6. Should the morals of commercial films be regulated? If so by whom? Why?
7. In what way were Catholics and Jews, representing immigrant groups, more Puritan than the old-line Protestants?

27. The Great Religious Truce

1. How was interfaith amity sustained and intensified after World War II?
2. What is Judeo-Christian?
3. Do you agree or disagree with Reinhold Niebuhr that liberals place too much trust in human wisdom and virture?
4. If evangelicals concentrate on personal salvation and remove themselves from social issues, why have they favored war efforts?
5. Evaluate Billy Graham's pastorate to presidents (Eisenhower to George W. Bush)?
6. How did Cardinal Spellman, Bishop Sheen, and Father John Courtney Murray relate to politics?
7. How did Pope John XXIII affect American politics?
8. What was the significance of John F. Kennedy's speech in Houston to Protestant ministers?

28. The Rights Revolution

1. To what degree was religion the driving force behind the rights revolution?
2. In what way did the Civil Rights movement combine both head and heart?
3. What does Wills mean when he writes, there is "the need for each pole of the religious tradition to call on the other"? How did this work out with King, Chavez, and Deloria?
4. Why did fundamentalists fear feminism?
5. How has the Rights Revolution affected religions?

29. Evangelicals Counterattack

1. What caused Billy James Hargis to remark that America has turned its back on God? What caused the growth in private schools and homescholling?
2. What is Christian Heritage College?
3. Evaluate humanism? Is it anti-religious?

30. Faith-Based Government

1. Is it proper for a president to have prayer services and Bible study groups in the White House and religious services at the General Services Administration?
2. What is Opus Dei?
3. Why do evangelicals despise the language of Enlightenment and enlightenment religionists despise evangelical God-talk?
4. Was the distribution of Bush campaign literature by Bishop Daniels appropriate?
5. Are faith-based programs "compassion in action" or "religion in politics"?
6. What is the Discovery Institute?
7. Does "intelligent design" belong in the science curriculum?
8. Is a book religion or science that claims the Grand Canyon was formed by the Great Flood? Does it belong in a National Park Service bookstore?
9. Should the FDA's decision to permit over-the-counter sale of the "morning-after pill" be based on science, morals, or religion?
10. Has religion trumped science in the Bush Administration?
11. Should fertility clinics be banned?
12. Is euthanasia illegal because it is a sin?
13. Why are most Christian fundamentalists in favor of the war in Iraq?

31. Ecumenical Karl

1. How did Rove build a winning coalition?
2. How did Colson and Neuhaus bring conservative Catholics and fundamental Protestants together?
3. Why have Christian fundamentalists favored school vouchers?
4. Is it proper for a Catholic bishop to deny communion to a pro-choice church member?
5. Why did 52 percent of Catholics vote for Bush in 2004?
6. Do political arguments need to be demonstrable?
7. How does Wills argue that abortion is not a religious issue?

32. Life after Rove

1. Were Nader voters responsible for Bush's 2000 election?
2. How did Rove put together a coalition of moralists and libertarians?
3. Why does Wills call Prohibition a disaster?
4. If government offends God, are the people justified in resisting it? How?
5. Is killing a doctor who works in a clinic where abortions are performed, the same as killing a Nazi officer who worked in a concentration camp where Jews were put to death? What Biblical citations did Paul Hill use to attempt to justify that all good citizens should kill abortionists?
6. Is a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning same-sex marriage a form of gay-bashing or a way to protect traditional marriage?
7. What makes former President Carter believe the abortion rate can be reduced?
8. How did Obama's remarks on AIDS at the Saddleback Church combine head and heart?

Epilogue: Separation not Suppression

1. Are your standards of morality affected by religion?
2. If belief in an after-life strengthens public morals, is the state justified in requiring a belief?
3. Does separation of church and state, help or hurt religion?
4. Why does evangelical Mark Noll write that "creation science" has damaged Evangelicalism?
5. Why does Wills describe the relationship between head and heart in America as a "precarious" but "persistent" balance?

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