Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic

FEATURING R. LAURENCE MOORE – The US is a deeply religious country. A poll in 2016 by the Public Religion Research Institute found that nearly 70% of Americans identify as Christian, and about 45% say they attend Church regularly. Of the rest, there are myriad other religions including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc. There are constitutional protections for religious beliefs.

And in fact the idea of religious liberty has been deeply politicized by Donald Trump’s government and the American evangelical right wing. But what about the non-believers? Why, in a nation that also separates church from state, is there such an outsized representation of religion and protections of religious liberties? A new history book attempts to explore this question.

R. Laurence Moore, Professor Emeritus of History and American Studies at Cornell University, co-author with Isaac Kramnick of the new book Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic: Atheists in American Public Life.