On Wednesday evening, March 3, 2021, Discourse in Democracy hosted a talk by Dr. Carl Richard, a professor of history at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who delivered a speech titled “The Founders on Religion, Morality and Republicanism.” The talk explored the founders’ views on the role of religion in public life and the moral preconditions of republican government. The talk was followed by a question and answer period. 35 students attended the lecture in person while close to 200 others participated via zoom. Prior to the talk, Dr. Richard met informally over dinner with several students and faulty members.
The following morning, Dr. Richard presided over a seminar attended by two dozen undergraduate and graduate majors (some via zoom, others face-to-face) on “Classical and Biblical Influences on the American Founders.” The seminar was followed by a lunch that gave several students a chance to meet Dr. Richard in a formal setting.
John Flores, a graduate student in the department, described Dr. Richard’s lecture “captivating” commenting that it “highlighted a useful distinction between civic virtues, as provided by the classics, and personal virtue as provided by biblical teachings. Each of these seemed to have a profound effect on our country’s founding.”
Professor Richard’s books include The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment (Harvard, 1994); The Golden Age of the Classics in America (Harvard, 2009); The Founders and the Bible (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016); and The Battle for the American Mind: A Brief History of a Nation’s Thought (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). His visit was funded by a grant from the Jack Miller Center.
Dr. Richard’s March 3 lecture, “The Founders on Religion, Morality and Republicanism,” was recorded and can be watched online here: https://mediaflo.txstate.edu/hapi/v1/contents/permalinks/Rd64Hpb9/view.
