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

The Sacred Rights of Conscience contains original documents from both public and private papers, such as constitutions, statutes, legislative resolutions, speeches, sermons, newspapers, letters, and diaries. These documents provide a vivid reminder that religion was a dynamic factor in shaping American social, legal, and political 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.

Daniel L. Dreisbach is 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.

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