
Church
and State:
Protestantism and the American Revolution
July 25 - 31, 2010
Seminar Overview
The seminar on church and state for young faculty will examine the
question of Protestant traditions and the American Revolution. In
particular, it will explore why the great majority of dissenting
American Protestants supported the War for Independence even though
the Calvinist tradition (illustrated by Calvin himself) originally
advocated obedience to rulers and was hostile to the antinomianism
of more radical reformers. We will compare this with the thinking of
Protestant Loyalists who for religious or other reasons chose
against the American Revolution, as well as Enlightenment themes in
American Revolutionary thought. The seminar will also study the
effects of colonial experience on Protestant arguments during the
Revolution, the effects of the War on these opinions, and subsequent
Protestant contributions to the Constitutional Convention and the
adjudication of religious questions in the new states.
Seminar Faculty:
Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame
Michael McConnell, Stanford Law School
Harry S. Stout, Yale Divinity School
Donald Drakeman, Princeton University
Select Readings:
- Ellis Sandoz, ed., Political Sermons of the American Founding Era,
1730-1805 (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund)
- Daniel Dreisbach and Mark David Hall, eds., The Sacred Rights of
Conscience: Selected Readings on Religious Liberty and Church-State
Relations in the American Founding (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund)
Seminar Participants
This seminar is open to post-doctoral, tenure-track, and non-tenure-track
scholars in the fields of political science, history, law, and
political philosophy