Town Hall

Faith and the Founding: The Bible and the Constitution

Thursday, October 18

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Daniel Dreisbach, author of Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers, delivers a keynote lecture on the influence of religion on the Founders and our founding documents. The conversation then continues with leading scholars Marci Hamilton, Daniel Mark, and Russell Shorto. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates. Alan R. Crippen II, chief of Exhibits, Programs, and Public Engagement for the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center at American Bible Society, provides remarks on behalf of the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center. 

This program is presented in partnership with the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center.
 


Participants

  • Daniel Dreisbach is a professor in the department of Justice, Law & Criminology at American University. His principal research interests include American constitutional law and history, First Amendment law, church-state relations, and criminal procedure. He has authored, co-authored, or edited 10 books, including The Forgotten Founders on Religion and Public Life, Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State, and Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers.
     
  • Marci Hamilton is the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program Professor of Practice, and Fox Family Pavilion Resident Senior Fellow in the Program for Research on Religion at the University of Pennsylvania. She has represented numerous cities dealing with church-state issues and has argued before the Supreme Court to challenge the constitutionality of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Boerne v. Flores. She is also the author of God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. 
     
  • Daniel Mark is an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, where he teaches political theory, philosophy of law, American government, and politics and religion. He also chaired the nine-member, bipartisan United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, to which he was appointed by Speaker John Boehner. In addition, Mark is an assistant editor of Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy.
     
  • Russell Shorto is the author of five books and is a contributing writer at the The New York Times Magazine. His books have been published in 14 languages and have won numerous awards. From 2008 to 2013, he was the director of the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam. He is the author of the 2010 New York Times Magazine cover story, “How Christian Were the Founders?”
     
  • 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.
     

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