Conference on Religions and Freedom 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

Registration – Friedman Hall Lobby

Teacher PD Session – Andrews House

Workshop – John Carter Brown Library, Conference Room

5:30 pm Keynote with Ben Park, reception and exhibit viewing to follow

John Carter Brown Library, MacMillan Reading Room

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”

Doug 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

[Timing TBD] 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: Church, State, 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: Religious Freedom and Democracy

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