Join Jane Calvert, author of Penman of the Founding: A Biography of John Dickinson, Vincent Phillip Muñoz, author of Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion Clauses, and Thomas Kidd, author of God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution, for a discussion on religious liberty and the founders. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
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Jane Calvert has taught at St. Mary's College of Maryland, the University of Kentucky, and Yale University and is currently director and chief editor of the John Dickinson Writings Project. Her work, which has been supported by leading research institutions as well as federal agencies, focuses on the intersection of theology and political theory in the Colonial and Founding Eras. She is the author of Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson and Penman of the Founding: A Biography of John Dickinson.
Thomas Kidd serves as research professor of Church History at Midwestern & the John and Sharon Yeats Endowed Chair of Baptist Studies. Kidd completed a Ph.D. in history at the University of Notre Dame, where he worked with historian of religion George Marsden. Kidd has authored numerous books including Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh; Who Is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis; American History, vols. 1 and 2; Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father; American Colonial History: Clashing Cultures and Faiths; Baptists in America: A History; George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father; Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots; God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution; and The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America.
Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville Associate Professor of Religion & Public Life in the department of political science at the University of Notre Dame. He is the founding director of Notre Dame's Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government. Muñoz is the author of God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson; Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents; and Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion Clauses. His scholarship has been cited multiple times in church-state Supreme Court opinions.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- The First Amendment, National Constitution Center exhibit
- Jane E. Calvert, Penman of the Founding: A Biography of John Dickinson (2024)
- Thomas Kidd, Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh (2022)
- Vincent Phillip Muñoz, Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion Clauses (2022)
- Thomas Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (2010)
- Vincent Phillip Muñoz , God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson (2009)
- Letter From George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, (August 18, 1790)
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