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

"The pursuit of religious liberty has been one of the grand principles of the American experiment. In The Sacred Rights of Conscience, scholars Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall present an unprecedented collection of primary documents that illustrate the creation of distinctively American approaches to religious liberty and church-state relations. The rights of conscience and prudential relationships between religion and public life have been a source of controversy since the first settlements in the New World, and they continue to provoke energetic debate today. This volume provides a thorough and balanced examination of the evolving relationships between public religion and American culture from pre-colonial times through the early nineteenth century. This collection allows the reader to explore the social and political forces that defined the concept of religious liberty and shaped American church-state relations." "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. The original documents have been gathered from both public and private papers and include constitutions, statutes, legislative resolutions, speeches, sermons, newspapers, letters, and diaries. The editors have written a rich introduction to the collection, placing these documents within a historical context and explaining their significance, as well as brief introductions to each chapter and headnotes to selections. A bibliography of major works on religion in American public life directs readers to additional primary sources and secondary literature. Theappendixes include a chronology of American church-state developments and an outline of the crucial deliberations in the first federal Congress leading to the language of the First Amendment religious clause." Not a collection of dusty documents of interest only to academics, this volume 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.