Where Do Our Religious Freedom Principles Come From?

Everywhere we turn these days, we are confronted with issues
of religious liberty. Can employers be
compelled to include contraceptives and abortifacients in their employee health
plans, if their faith teaches it’s wrong?
Can a photographer be fined for refusing, because of her faith, to
photograph a same-sex union ceremony?
Can a town council continue its traditional practice of having local
clergy give an invocation before each council meeting? Is it unlawful for the government to tolerate
the presence of a volunteer-maintained memorial cross honoring veterans on
public land? Can the government dictate
the “ministerial” hiring practices of churches and religious schools? Can a bureaucrat at a federal veterans’
cemetery tell local volunteers not to offer to pray with the bereaved who come
for their loved ones’ funerals? Can the
military, in the name of “tolerance,” muzzle its chaplains’ preaching of their
faith? Can a state legislature take
steps to protect the age-old definition of marriage, or even just the freedom
of its citizens to act on a religious belief in that definition, without a
judge somewhere striking down the legislation for violating the “separation of
church and state”?

America has perhaps the strongest legal principles in the
world protecting religious freedom—which is not to say that those principles
are always happily realized, nor that they sprang into being at some magical
moment of perfection. But the
foundations of our religious-freedom law were put in place after years of struggle
in colonial and revolutionary America over the relationship between church and
state, religion and politics.
Understanding these foundations is indispensable to a full understanding
of where we are today.

To that end, this summer the Witherspoon
Institute, where I direct the Simon
Center on Religion and the Constitution, will hold a Church and
State Seminar: Religion and Liberty in the American Founding Era. As in past years, we will bring together
young scholars—untenured professors, postdoctoral scholars, and dissertation-writing
doctoral students—to discuss primary sources from the founding era on the
origins of the American understanding of church-state relations and religious
freedom. If you are one of these
scholars, in history, political science, law, theology, or religious studies, or
any related field, you can apply to
attend the seminar by April 15 and we will give you a fast decision on your
application. A modest registration fee
if you are accepted, and responsibility for your own travel to Princeton, will
be your only significant expenses; we provide food and lodging for the week of
July 27 to August 2. The application is
easy—a brief form, a cover letter, and a CV.

The seminar’s main text is the copious anthology The
Sacred Rights of Conscience, published by Liberty Fund. Other readings will be supplied
electronically. The seminar’s faculty
are leading scholars of American religious freedom: Daniel Dreisbach, constitutional
scholar at American University and co-editor of the main text; Thomas S. Kidd,
historian of American religion at Baylor University; and Gerald
R. McDermott, theologian and scholar of religious history at Roanoke
College. With discussion leaders like
these, we look forward to a richly rewarding seminar. If this is up your street, please apply!