THE RADICAL EVENT OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Jonathan Israel, The Expanding Blaze: How the American Revolution Ignited the World, 1775-1848 (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2017) ("Americans often remained (and remain) unaware that their Founding Fathers were predominantly irreligious deists and atheists privately repudiating religion. Freeing the individual as far as possible from clerical tutelage and widening toleration, as well as disestablishing churches, and separating church and state, represented an indispensable goal for the American Revolution's leading figures since most were Unitarians, deists, or nonbelievers." Id. at 86. "The great majority of those who participated in the framing of the United States Constitution of 1787 had no wish to extend the reach of popular participation in political life; their main goal was to retain control within the hands of the existing political elites." Id. at 79.).