American Enlightenment
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The American Enlightenment is a term sometimes employed to describe the intellectual culture of the British North American colonies and the early United States (as they became known following the American Revolution). It was a part of a larger intellectual movement known as the Age of Enlightenment. Influenced by the scientific revolution of the 17th century, the Enlightenment took scientific reasoning and applied it to human nature, society and religion. Politically the age is distinguished by an emphasis upon liberty, democracy, republicanism and religious tolerance – culminating in the drafting of the United States Declaration of Independence. Attempts to reconcile science and religion resulted in a widespread rejection of prophecy, miracle and revealed religion in preference for Deism – especially by Thomas Paine in "The Age of Reason" and by Thomas Jefferson in his short Jefferson Bible – from which all supernatural aspects were removed.
