Author of “Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers”

allen_brooke.jpgBrooke Allen, author of Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers (2006, Ivan R. Dee), will lecture about the religious beliefs (or lack thereof) among our nation’s founders. Her talk is free and open to the public, and begins at 7 p.m. Monday, February 13, in UNC Asheville’s Humanities Lecture Hall.

Allen’s study focused on the religious and intellectual lives of founding fathers Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton, and concludes that that the United States was founded not on Christian principles, but on Enlightenment ideas.


Allen teaches literature at Bennington College. Her most recent book is
The Other Side of the Mirror: An American Travels Through Syria (2011,
Paul Dry Books). She is also the author of two collections of literary
essays. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The Atlantic, The New
York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal,
and many other
periodicals. She holds master’s degrees from the Université de
Paris-Sorbonne and from Columbia University, where she also earned a Ph.
D. in English literature.


Allen’s lecture is sponsored by the National Endowment for the
Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professorship at UNC Asheville. For
more information, contact Merritt Moseley, professor of Literature, at
(828) 251-6583.