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"Religious Liberty and the First Amendment"

Two of America's leading historians join forces for a special program inside Christ Church that explores one of the enduring themes in the American experience: the struggle for religious liberty and its enshrinement in the First Amendment. Join presidential historian Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky and humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson for a discussion of the history of the First Amendment and Virginia's unique role defending freedom of religion.

Chervinsky is the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon and author of multiple award-winning books. Jenkinson is the author of thirteen books and the host of Listening to America (formerly The Thomas Jefferson Hour). They regularly appear together on Listening to America and will bring their witty banter and love of history to the Historic Christ Church community.

The setting may seem ironic. When completed in 1735, Christ Church stood as the antithesis of religious liberty. Its triple-deck pulpit, seating arrangements and massive scale and refinement represented an idealized vision of the Church of England's authority and traditional role in Virginia. Yet it was here and at churches, courthouses, and public and private spaces across the colony that Virginians' landmark struggle for religious freedom took shape.

For Jenkinson, religious liberty is "Jefferson's greatest hit." Jenkinson insists that in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom Jefferson was right to argue that "liberty of conscience, liberty to think what we think, write what we want to write, say what we want to say, is the key to all other liberties." Indeed, Jefferson believed the constitutional freedom of religion to be "the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights."

Tickets: $125.00 includes cocktail hour before the presentation and a light supper in the courtyard following. Series ticket: $175.00. Part two of the 2025 Spring Speaker Series "A Revolution in Liberty: Lexington and Concord to the First Amendment."