On our very first day in Williamsburg, the Rev. Dr. Corey D. B. Walker posed two questions to us that stuck with me in a meaningful way: “Why are we writing the stories we write? For whom?” These questions centered my time in Williamsburg and will continue to animate my work going forward. While they’re certainly important questions to ask for purely academic work,  I find them even more crucial to consider as a budding scholar-advocate. Effective advocacy is all about storytelling, and the story of religious freedom in America should include people of all religious traditions and none, people of all races and ethnicities, and people of all gender identities and sexualities. For me, it’s imperative to acknowledge how systems of white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia and xenophobia have historically kept many out of the narrative of religious freedom and to correct those injustices going forward.

One of the most impactful moments for me during our time in Colonial Williamsburg was getting out of the classroom and taking a walking tour of some of the historical sites in the area. Whether walking through the rooms in George Wythe’s house or standing in front of the archaeological site of the First Baptist Church of Williamsburg, the Rev. Dr. Walker’s questions were made real right in front of me. I tend to think of religious freedom as something that’s found in law school textbooks or Supreme Court decisions, but the walking tour reminded me that religious freedom is a theological, political and cultural ideal that exists vibrantly within our places of worship, our schools and our homes. Ultimately, this experience affirmed to me that the history of religious freedom in America is deeply contested, and it’s up to us not only to reclaim this narrative but to create a new history for future generations.

 The greatest gift of my time in Colonial Williamsburg, though, was the deep, long-lasting connections I made with my fellow cohort members and with members of the BJC staff. It was invigorating to meet such kind, thoughtful, and driven people who were all committed to the pursuit of religious liberty. The fact that each of us brought vastly different questions, identities, and motivations to the experience only made our relationships stronger, and I had uniquely meaningful conversations with other members of my BJC Fellows cohort. Post-Williamsburg, one of the other BJC Fellows and I started our own writing group to continue to think collaboratively about the uncovered histories and future possibilities of religious freedom in America. From this time spent in community, I feel confident that I not only have the tools to succeed in my own personal journey of religious freedom advocacy but that I’m also well-equipped to help others in our collective fight for faith freedom for all.

As a whole, this experience has energized me to take what I’ve learned back home to the communities I care about. While I’m lucky to live in an area of the United States where the threat of Christian nationalism isn’t experienced quite as directly, I believe that it’s incredibly important for all Americans to learn about the dangers of Christian nationalism and to advocate for religious freedom, regardless of where they live. Religious freedom is a crucial part of all the issues that I care about — from reproductive freedom to LGTBQ rights to racial justice — but this truth isn’t clear if how we talk about religious freedom excludes the very people it impacts the most. 

During the seminar’s reading and discussion of Dr. Michael Meyerson’s Endowed by Our Creator: The Birth of Religious Freedom in America, I recalled the author’s description of John Leland, a Baptist leader who pushed for religious freedom. “Fundamental to his philosophy was the belief that the ‘rights of conscience and private judgment’ were inalienable rights,” wrote Meyerson, echoing some of Leland’s words, “that no government could acquire and no individual could surrender: ‘Like sight, hearing, thinking and breathing, they are always attached to individuals’” (. To be sure, the legal underpinning of religious liberty remains deeply important. Dr. Meyerson opened a window into the strenuous efforts to craft a sufficient legal articulation of religious liberty, efforts complicated by both the diversity of beliefs in early America and the beliefs of the Framers themselves. There is truly much at stake in this hard-fought expression of religious freedom. This includes both a staunch defense of the No-Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. And yes, we will arbitrate many disagreements over religious liberty in courts of law, where such matters are litigated by attorneys and ruled upon by judges. But the more I engaged with the early history of religious freedom, the more I realized that there is a higher plane in the fight for freedom of religion. That higher plane is nothing less than an understanding of what makes us human and who we include in that “human.” Religious freedom is not just about our legal reasoning. It is about our moral imagination.

If our time with Dr. Meyerson made clear that early voices of religious freedom prioritized its status as a natural right, an entitlement recognized by law but not given by it, [O]ur session with Dr. Sabrina Dent concretized religious freedom as a human right and a matter of human dignity, universal in aspiration but limited in application. This moment offered a sober reminder that not all people have been recognized as being fully human, that the same Enlightenment thinkers responsible for liberal ideas like religious tolerance also perpetuated racist hierarchies in which distance from whiteness meant an absence of cherished human virtues, such as rationality. And as someone of African descent, I think especially of Black people, long valued for their bodies but not for their minds. Dr. Dent encouraged me to see that thinking and writing more expansively about religious liberty requires that we expand our scope to take in far more than those figures frequently cast as religious dissenters. The work of religious freedom advocacy depends on our ability to recognize the limits of religious liberty at the margins, among underrepresented and vulnerable communities. Religious liberty proponents must reckon with the history and ongoing denial of religious liberty that proceeds less from a perception of religious difference than one of human difference.

In some cases, as Jennifer Hawks’ and Amanda Tyler’s presentations made clear, political difference becomes to point of exclusion. But religious liberty must extend to everyone, if its promise as a universal right is to be taken seriously. Religious freedom, like any right guaranteed or affirmed by the Constitution, does not belong by one side of the political spectrum or a single constituency. Notwithstanding some associations of religious liberty claims with misplaced efforts to restore America’s status as a “Christian nation,” freedom of religion is not the preserve of right-wing of dogwhistlers, those wishing to signal a “return” of God to schools and halls of power. At its best, religious freedom is non-partisan. And defending religious liberty involves nothing less than a willingness to defend the rights of those who religious beliefs prescribe values opposed to our own. Ardent Christians, whether conservative or progressive, and those of no faith at all, must be careful not to project their beliefs onto the past as a way to exclude those they disagree with in the present.

Long before arriving, I had witnessed my mother’s passage through law school. Surrounded by weighty books and walls plastered with notes, she would translate legal jargon into language her young child could latch onto: “We have rights, and those rights are in the Constitution.” I later worked for over six years in municipal law enforcement, a career inaugurated by an oath to support the U.S. Constitution. Having so sworn, I worked to become a knowledgeable interpreter of the Bill of Rights and the limits it imposed on the government. I did not expect my time at the 2024 BJC Fellows Seminar to reconnect my passion for religious freedom to my deepest held liberal beliefs, but that is precisely what the experience did. I came away as someone even more confident in liberty of conscience and certain in the conviction that to be human is to have an inherent capacity for deliberation and judgment. Religious freedom isn’t just some abstract idea articulated on dusty parchment. It is a recognition of who we are as human beings: thinking creatures, wonderfully made. Respecting the right of religious freedom isn’t just about respecting the law. It’s about respecting humanity, and the dignity demanded by human being.

The shock of those words hit me at my core because clearly, at one point, someone was not included in this opening phrase of a document that created this “land of the free… .”

My experience during the week was stuck with the statement that “‘We the People’ is still expanding.” What does that mean, that “We the People, are still growing?” Are “people” still being defined by the standards of white men who could not even define themselves? Are people still being defined as less than human and given a fraction of humanity to meet the need for economic acquisition?

The Framers had an opportunity; they took it upon themselves to define what humanity is, and thus, this brings me to my thoughts about how “We the People” are still being defined. What I did gather from this week, being stuck in the era of the freshness of “We, the People,” is that America was built on its own trauma response to the Framers of this nation. And those who came — those who in some other place and time, appeared to have lost some level of dignity and personhood — attempted to gain their understanding of humanity again by saying they discovered something that was already inhabited. The Framers were trying to make right for themselves with no focused thought on how they were bringing pain, harm, and death to others.

From a bioethical standpoint, with theology leading out in the understanding, we see from a theological standpoint that these individuals were taking upon themselves this space to determine what God had already determined to be. Well, they decided that they would define who and what could be human and animal. From a psychological standpoint, the Framers used what was mentally available because physical freedom was obtained without freedom of mind being made well. It makes me ask, “What was the capacity of the Framers in their minds that they thought was right to define humanity so that we could have the notion of thinking that ‘We the People’ could be an expanding thought? From a sociological standpoint, was it in the Framers’ minds that they could own bodies?” They could steal land from others and then claim it as their own, reproduce it, resettle it and then give rules to that land as if it were God’s gift. And in my thinking, I can only assume they thought this to be right based on the biblical notions of being “chosen people.” Moving from captivity to being promised a land that flowed with milk and honey, which was already inhabited and tended to by others. And then, from an anthropological standpoint, what does it look like historically that we are still in a space where we are defining humans and people? What does it look like that we sit in spaces where, in 2024, we are defining what humanity is, who can be, and what is fully human? We decide who needs to be caged, what types of racially aligned jobs are being offered, or who needs to be killed for the sake of liberation because they are not our types of “We the People”?

It is sad that the Framers thought and dismissed the value of writing down instructions to revisit this country’s ‘sacred’ documents. Though we seem to think it radical the offer of religious freedom in the work that framed this country, we also like to dismiss what that term really meant and even how segregation in the settlements of this nation started with their wounds from the lack thereof. I am saddened, yet I embrace levels of hope that, one day, we will move away from the ever-expanding thoughts of defining bodies and humanness. We will move into allowing people to genuinely experience religious freedom from the context of their humanity because “We are the People,” and that is something that does not need to be defined.

In Tennessee, we have a legislature in which all claim Christianity as their faith tradition, not matter their party affiliation. In Tennessee, it is hard to get elected if you don’t claim the Christian faith. Thus, as you might imagine, it is often Christian chaplains, ministers and pastors who pray the invocation before legislative sessions. And while the fact that they are all Christian isn’t an issue, the legislation that is put forth often has a largely Christian hue to it As a Christian pastor in the Disciples of Christ tradition, I am called to ask, “What voices aren’t being heard? Which voices are not at the table?” Thus, I must fight against Christian supremacy to ensure that all of my neighbors’ voices are being heard.

 There are certainly examples of blatant Christian nationalism in Tennessee. For example, people in Rutherford County protested and attempted to block the building of a mosque, which finally did open in 2012. Some citizens didn’t consider Islam a religion, therefore they didn’t feel they were infringing on their neighbors’ right to the free exercise of religion. There are also many less overt examples. Earlier this year, the Tennessee General Assembly passed HB 2125, which names the month of November as “Christian Heritage Month.” This bill doesn’t mandate the teaching of Christian heritage in public schools or mandate observation by state employees, but I would argue that it is still Christian nationalism because it seems to elevate one faith over the others. There was no bill to specify a Muslim Heritage month, or a Pagan Heritage month. Because of this, one could argue that the state is indirectly establishing a religion by privileging one faith over all others. Framing Christian nationalism as a spectrum ensures that my colleagues and I aren’t just waiting for the more blatant and dangerous examples before we act. 

I am so grateful to have had this experience and cannot overstate how formative it has been for me. I believe that this experience has not only prepared me for a Ph.D. program, but I believe it has better prepared me for my ministry.