On Thursday, April 17th, Discourse in Democracy hosted the University of San Diego’s Steven D. Smith for a lecture titled “Undoing the American Settlement; The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom.” Smith’s lecture focused on the way in which America’s traditional approach to religion and public life was shaped by the decentralized nature of the American body politic, our far-reaching religious pluralism, and our lack of a consensus about the proper role of religion in public life. This approach allowed states and localities considerable latitude to craft their own approaches to this subject. Today’s culture wars, Smith argued, were precipitated in part by the Supreme Court’s attempt, starting in the 1960s, to impose a unified approach on American society. The lecture was followed by questions and answers.
One grad student who attended the lecture called it “extremely interesting,” adding that Smith “brought up points that are broadly missed by the mainstream conversation around religious freedom.” Another applauded his attention to “history,” arguing that Smith succeeded in “establishing an alternative genealogy of religious freedom.”
The following day, Smith held a seminar for faculty, grad students, and undergraduate students. In the seminar, he expanded on some points from his lecture including the internal tensions in the approach to religious liberty advocated by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and the impact of declining religiosity on the future of American religious liberty. The seminar afforded students the opportunity to engage Smith in discussion, and as one attendee noted, “connect Smith’s scholarship to points of interest to [them].”
If you’d like to watch a recording of Smith’s lecture, you can do so here.
