Religious Liberty and the Founding Workshop

James Madison stated in Federalist No. 51 that “In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights.” And, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The constitutional freedom of religion [is] the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights.” (Minutes of the Board of Visitors, University of Virginia, 1819).

The Washington, Jefferson & Madison Institute's is pleased to announce that its next continuing education workshop will be on the topic of “Religious Liberty and the Founding.” The program will include four, 50-minute sessions, each led by a moderator with an open discussion focused on original source documents.  Instead of lectures or presentations, the format of the "roundtable" will be a civic conversation that draws deeply on the documents with participation by all.  If you would like to participate in the roundtable, we ask you to prepare by doing the document readings (about 50 pages) and coming ready to discuss with your fellow teachers.  After you register we will email you the Reader (or mail if you prefer a hard copy).  Copies of the Reader will be provided at the conference as well.  The outline of the sessions and source documents are as follows:

1. The Foundation: The Declaration of Independence, Natural Rights, and Limited Government 

2. Religious Liberty in Virginia: George Mason v. James Madison: Toleration v. Freedom of Conscience in the Virginia Declaration of Rights; and James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom 

3. The First Amendment: Free Exercise and the Establishment Clause 

4. George Washington & Religious Liberty: Letters to the Congregations 

WJMI welcomes the following panel of moderators to this conference:

Jeffry H. Morrison, Ph.D., Director of Academics at the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation and Professor of Government at Regent University

Tony Williams, WJMI Program Director and Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute

J. David Gowdy, J.D., WJMI Founder & President

All class materials including the Reader, a continental breakfast, as well as a luncheon, are complimentary. The roundtable is primarily for public and private Virginia secondary school teachers who teach Social Studies, U.S. Government, Virginia Government, and U. S. History.  The Workshop qualifies for four recertification points or 4 hours.

The Roundtable will be held Friday morning, October 7th, 2016 from 9:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Prospect Hill Plantation Inn near Charlottesville.  If you wish to attend, please Contact Us.

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Image: First Prayer in the Continental Congress (1974). See: http://chaplain.house.gov/archive/continental.html