Sacred Rights of Conscience: Selected Readings on Religious Liberty & Church-State Relations in the American Founding

This text provides students and scholars a rich collection of primary sources that illuminate the discussions and debates about religious liberty in the American founding era. This compilation of primary documents provides a thorough and balanced examination of the evolving relationship between public religion and American culture, from pre-colonial biblical and European sources to the early nineteenth century, to allow the reader to explore the social and political forces that defined the concept of religious liberty and shaped American church-state relations.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; Part I: Antecedents of the Principles Governing Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in America -- Biblical and European Heritages. Part II: Creating the Principles Governing Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in Colonial America -- Fundamental Laws, Declaration of Rights, and Public Acts on Ecclesiastical Establishments and Religious Liberty in Colonial America; Letters, Tracts, and Sermons on Religious Liberty and Duty in Colonial America. Part III: Framing the Constitutional Principles Governing Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in the American Founding; The Continental and Confederation Congresses and Church-State Relations; State Constitutions, Laws, and Papers on Church and State in Revolutionary America; Petitions, Essays, and Sermons on Church and State in Revolutionary America; References to God and the Christian Religion in the U.S. Constitution; The Religious Test Ban of the U.S. Constitution; The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Part IV Defining and Testing the Constitutional Principles Governing Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in the New Nation; Religion and the Public Policy and Culture of the New Nation; Religion and Politics in the Election of 1800; Thomas Jefferson and the "Wall of Separation"; Christianity, the Common Law, and the American Order; Reflections on the American Church-State Experiment. Appendixes; Historical Chronology, 1607-1833; Summary of Deliberations in the First Federal Congress on the First Amendment Religion Provisions, 1789; Selected Bibliography; Index.

About the Author :
Daniel L Dreisbach is William E Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life for the James Madison Program in American Institutions at Princeton University and professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. Mark David Hall is Herbert Hoover Distinguished Professor of Political Science at George Fox University.

Review :
The Sacred Rights of Conscience was a winner in the Scholarly/Reference category at the Chicago Book Clinic's 2010 Book & Media Show. Not a collection of dusty documents of interest only to academics, The Sacred Rights of Conscience is of direct relevance to current debates about religious liberty and church-state relations. Today's concerns about the place and role of religion in public life are strikingly similar to those of the early nineteenth century. Then, as well as now, judicial decisions and societal opinions were shaped by the history of ideas and law presented here. These documents are a vivid reminder that religion was a dynamic factor in shaping American culture and that there has been a struggle since the inception of the republic to define the prudential and constitutional role of religion in public culture. . . . One purpose of The Sacred Rights of Conscience is to paint a richer and fuller portrait of the development of church-state relations and religious liberty in America, drawing on the writings and experiences of both the famous and the sometimes forgotten individuals who contributed to this aspect of American life. This collection of primary documents was conceived to introduce modern readers to the history of religious liberty and church-state relations in the American experience. This volume surveys the evolving relationship between public religion and American social, legal, and political culture from the colonial era to the early national period, and explores the social and political forces that defined the concept of religious liberty and shaped church-state relations in America. The Sacred Rights of Conscience combines important primary documents with editorial notes providing context and, where appropriate, brief commentary documents and topics were selected on the basis of the importance of their contribution to American political and intellectual thought, the saliency of the ideas they illustrate, and relevancy to enduring themes of church-state relations. . . . Given the extensive and continuing influence of history in analyzing the prudential and constitutional place of religion in the American polity, this collection of historical documents will cast light not only on the past but also on the present and the future of the American experiment in liberty under law. The Sacred Rights of Conscience is a rich collection of primary sources with a thorough and balanced introduction placing the documents in historical context and explaining their significance. The Sacred Rights of Conscience will prove a useful resource for students of religion in American public life. Students and scholars of American history, politics, law, theology, and religion will relish this collection of primary source material, much of it unavailable or hard to find in other published collections. SirReadalot February 2010