Goodbye King George III, Hello King Jesus?

The first section explores the nature of religion-state relations throughout the Colonial period, with special attention paid to the founding and subsequent development of “exceptional” Puritan communities that had co-dependent religion-state relations. The second section, meanwhile, focuses on the Constitutional period. Specifically, of consequence here is how religion and government took on independent responsibilities, a demarcation that began during the Colonial period and was institutionalized at the Federal level by The First Amendment and the state level by The Fourteenth Amendment. Before this happened, America was arguably a Christian country, and the Government drew its legitimacy from God, but what emerged beginning in the Constitutional period was a secular government that had supremacy over religion as a source of societal influence.

Faculty Dissertations, 1984

It has not been uncommon for historians to view America as an experimental laboratory in political theory and practice in which the American character is represented as a triumph of common sense over ideology. The title of one recent book, Inventing America, and the subtitle of another, How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment, together reflect a long fascination with the Yankee ingenuity of a nation of tinkerers. 1 The history books often neglect to acknowledge the religious 157

Journal of Church and State, 2006

Responding to several new histories of church and state in America, this Article warns against the emerging view that separation of church and state is a distinctly American and relatively modern invention that has been used principally to harm religion and religious freedom. The Article traces the historical roots and routes of the principle of separation of church and state in biblical, patristic, Catholic, Protestant, and Enlightenment sources. It then shows how the eighteenth-century American founders used this principle to press five religious liberty concerns: protection of the state from the church; protection of the church from the state; protection of liberty of conscience from both church and state; protection of the new states from the federal government in their treatment of religion; and protection of citizens from unwelcome support and participation in religion. Finally, the article analyses the uses and misuses of this principle in the later history of American law.

The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society, 2018

Intellectual fissures about how to best protect religious liberty in the United States are the product of a nation that has become increasingly more diverse and the Supreme Court's application of the Religious Clauses. But tensions over how to protect religious liberty were evident even at the founding of the American Republic. This is revealed in the debates within and outside of the Constitutional Convention, the thirteen state ratifying conventions, the First Federal Congress, and the creation of one of America's first public secular universities-the University of Virginia. Colonial Americans disagreed about how to best preserve religious liberty, especially whether it was better to provide protections in the federal or thirteen state constitutions. A historical examination of these debates can provide a deeper understanding of the complexity of drawing boundaries for the exercise of religious liberty. The historical record also calls into question the wisdom of the Supreme Court adopting Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation" metaphor as its constitutional touchstone for Establishment and Free Exercise cases. Fortunately, another standard, rooted in the historical record, can be constructed-the Mutual Independence of Church and State. This standard can be used by the Supreme Court and the lower courts to better protect and promote religious liberty in postmodern America.

2018

This Essay argues that it’s perfectly fine for religious citizens to openly bring their faith-based values to public policy disputes. Part II demonstrates that the Founders, exemplified by Thomas Jefferson, never intended to separate religion from politics. Part III, focusing upon Abraham Lincoln’s opposition to slavery, shows that religion and politics have been continuously intermixed ever since the Founding. Part IV, emphasizing the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., argues that no other reasons justify barring faith-based arguments from the public square.

2016

Faculty Dissertations, 1984

2017