Demons and Thunder
By writer Jan Wim Buisman in a featured series about his book Lightning in the Age of Benjamin Franklin. This blog was originally published by the John Adams Institute. Enlightened Protestants and Catholics both wanted to liberate simple folk from ignorance, fear, and superstition by good instruction. In enlightened eyes, fear of thunderstorms was not only evidence […]
Religious Reactions to Thunderstorms
By writer Jan Wim Buisman in a featured series about his book Lightning in the Age of Benjamin Franklin. This blog was originally published by the John Adams Institute. That God addresses people directly in thunder and lightning was a generally accepted idea in the religious mentality of the sixteenth-, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century West. That notion of […]
A New Invention: Franklin and the Netherlands
By writer Jan Wim Buisman in a featured series about his book Lightning in the Age of Benjamin Franklin. This blog was originally published by the John Adams Institute. Benjamin Franklin visited the Dutch Republic on two occasions. When he and his son William travelled in the Austrian Netherlands and the Dutch Republic in August and September […]
