Conference on Religions and Freedoms c. 1776
On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the John Carter Brown Library and the John C. Danforth Center for Religion and Politics at Washington University will host a major conference in Providence, Rhode Island, June 4-6, 2026, on the broad topic of religions and freedom c. 1776.
There are many productive ways to investigate the histories, historical relationship, and legacies of religions and freedom across the breadth of early America. And religious freedom in America has a deep and important history, in which the conference location of Rhode Island itself plays a significant part. The conference aims to engage fresh scholarship and public interests in critical issues of religious freedom. Focused sessions will highlight new perspectives on classic questions, innovative methods, and new sources. We will host public events, including two evening keynotes, sessions for k-12 teachers, and programs dedicated to teacher professional development, in addition to panels dedicated to historical scholarship.
Program: Conference on Religions and Freedoms c. 1776
Providence, Rhode Island
June 4 - 6, 2026
Thursday, June 4, 2026
12:00-4:00 pm Registration – Friedman Hall Lobby
3:00-5:00 pm Teacher PD Session – Andrews House
5:30 pm Keynote: Histories of Religious Freedom: A Conversation with Benjamin Park, President of the Mormon History Association with reception and exhibit viewing to follow
John Carter Brown Library, MacMillan Reading Room
Please use this link to tune into the keynote remotely:
Friday, June 5, 2026
Registration – Friedman Hall Lobby
Coffee Break – Friedman 1st Floor Lobby
9:00 – 10:30 am Session 1: Discourse and Political Resistance
Friedman 102
T. Wyatt Reynolds, The Heart of Washington: Appeals to the Spirit of 1776 for Indigenous Sovereignty
Adrian Weimer, Western mansions against arbitrary power: New England's ‘Cause’ in 1776
Russell Arbic, We are a separate people’: Cherokee Belief and Practice in the Face of American Freedom
Linford Fisher, American Dispossession, American Freedom
CHAIR: Mark Valeri
Coffee Break – Friedman 1st Floor Lobby
11:00 am – 12:30 pm Session 2: Gender and Religion
Friedman 102
Katy Telling, Against All Strife and Wars: Quakers and Pacifist Manhood
Douglas Winiarski, New Light Family Values: Sex & Salvation in Revolutionary New England
Laura Leibman, Sampling Revolutions: How Jewish Schoolgirls Stitched Religious and Political Messages about the War of Independence
CHAIR: Christopher Grasso
Afternoon Break
2:00 – 3:30 pm Session 3: Race, Slavery, and Freedom
Friedman 102
Julie Reed, Language, Land, and Women: Cherokees and the American Revolution
Michael Breidenbach, Enslaved to Bishop John Carroll: Freedom, Slavery, and the Sacraments in Early American Catholicism
Richard McGee, Quakerism & the Prospect of Freedom: Reappraising the Link Between Slavery and the Saylesville Meeting House
CHAIR: Jon Sensbach
Coffee Break – Friedman 1st Floor Lobby
4:00 – 5:30 pm Session 4: Law and Public Authority
Friedman 102
Arvind Kurian Abraham, Law and Sectarianism in the Early Republic
Elliott Cramer, The Short Life and Long Legacy Maryland’s Ecclesiastical Courts, 1716-1718
Kevin Murphy, Loyalty Oaths, Religious Coercion and Secular Constitutionalism in the American Revolution, 1774-1791
Sara Georgini, The Deed of Mercy
CHAIR: Andrew Murphy
6:00-7:30 pm Plenary Session, followed by a reception
Sayles Hall
A Conversation with Charlotte Carrington-Farmer and Adam Jortner, moderated by Sarah Barringer Gordon: Iconic Moments in Religious Freedom: Rhode Island, 1636-1790
Saturday, June 6, 2026
Coffee Break – Friedman 1st Floor Lobby
9:00 – 10:00 am Session 5 (Concurrent Sessions):
Friedman 102 Property, Consumption, and Independence
Mintae Cha, Disestablishment Drama: Religion, Law, and Property in Massachusetts, 1740-1800
Mark Peterson, Religion and Consumption in New Jerusalem: Freedom and Doubt in New Haven’s Revolution
Sarah Gordon, The Price: The Revolution in Religion and its Forgotten Victims
Rebecca Brenner Graham, Sunday Mail: American Religious Freedom and the Battle Over Christian Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century
CHAIR: Karin Wulf
9:00 – 10:00 am Session 5 (Concurrent Sessions):
Friedman 108 Slavery, Dispossession, and Christianity
Rachel Wheeler, Netawatwees and Aupaumut: Indigenous Visions of Religious Freedom and Communal Survival in Revolutionary America
Andrew Murphy, Mingling Religion with Politics’: Revisiting the Philadelphia Quaker Exiles
Jon Sensbach, Treasonable or seditious discourses: Slavery and Religious Freedom in the Time of Dunmore
CHAIR: Linford Fisher
10:30 – 11:30 am Session 6 (Concurrent Sessions): Beyond Freedom
Friedman 102
Seth Perry, Thomas Paine on the Despotism of Toleration
Sarah Imhoff, Jews, Washington, and the Hallowed Narrative of Distinctive Toleration
Elsa Mendoza, Building on Bondage: Religious Toleration and Georgetown University’s Slaveholding Origins
Katherine Gerbner: Slavery, Rebellion, and the Limits of Religious Freedom
CHAIR: Sara Georgini
10:30 – 11:30 am Session 6 (Concurrent Sessions): Freedom of the Press
Friedman 108
Janice Breidenbach, "Is Religious Speech in Early America the Progenitor of Contemporary Expressive Civil Liberties?"
Michael Baysa, “Unpublishing Religion during the Revolution”
Joseph Adelman, “At the Sign of the Bible: Freedom of Conscience, Printers, and the Origins of the First Amendment”
Adam Jortner, “Seven Wonderful Stories About Religious Freedom and Why We Might Celebrate Them.”
CHAIR: Julie Reed
