Synopses & Reviews
In this groundbreaking interpretation of America's founding and of its entire system of judicial review, Larry Kramer reveals that the colonists fought for and created a very different system--and held a very different understanding of citizenship--than Americans believe to be the norm today.
"Popular sovereignty" was not just some historical abstraction, and the notion of "the people" was more than a flip rhetorical device invoked on the campaign trail. Questions of constitutional meaning provoked vigorous public debate and the actions of government officials were greeted with
celebratory feasts and bonfires, or riotous resistance. Americans treated the Constitution as part of the lived reality of their daily existence. Their self-sovereignty in law as much as politics was active not abstract.
Synopsis
The early Quakers denounced the clergy and social élite but what of Friends' relationships with others? By examining Quaker attitudes to neighbourliness, the family, the rites of passage, business, and other links, this lively and original study demonstrates that Quakers were not the marginal and isolated people as often portrayed by contemporaries and historians, and explores the their wider and significant impact upon early modern society.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [229]-253) and index.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I. Holy Subversives
1. Spiritual Warriors
2. The Quaker Tribe
3. Body Language
4. Levelling Quakers?
Part II. A Peculiar People
5. A Community of Worship
6. The Brotherhood
7. Love and Marriage
8. Gospel Order
9. Spreading Forth the Truth
Part III. Origins and Development
10. From Lollards to Quakers
11. Dregs of the People
12. The Growth and Decline of Quakerism
Part IV. Quakers and the World
13. A Suffering People
14. The Quakers in Society
Conclusion