The Lumen Christi Institute will host a lecture by our friend Rick Garnett (Notre Dame), “Religious Freedom in America Today,” in Chicago on September 26.  The description of the lecture follows. If you’re in Chicago, make sure to go. Rick is one of America’s leading law and religion scholars and always has something valuable to say. Details are here.

As President Clinton observed, “religious freedom is . . . our first freedom.” It was central to the Founders’ vision for the American political community. They did not always agree about what religious freedom means or requires, but they knew that it matters, and that it should be respected in policy and protected by law. James Madison, the Father of our Constitution, hoped that America’s religious-liberty experiment “promised a lustre to our country.” This lecture will take stock of this experiment and consider the rights of religious believers and institutions and their roles and voices in American public life today.