Religion and the American Revolution

Featuring original essays by Michael W. McConnell, Thomas S. Kidd, Jane E. Calvert, Meir Y. Soloveichik, and Vincent Phillip Muñoz.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of American independence, yet the founding is controversial now in ways it has not been in decades. The American Enterprise Institute offers a major intellectual and educational project to reintroduce Americans to the unique value of their national inheritance.

In the third volume of this series, scholars of American history and law consider the place of religion in the American Revolution. Many who participated in the American fight for independence viewed the cause as a fundamentally spiritual struggle, one with enormous implications for religion's future in American civil society.

Exploring the multifaceted ways in which the founding generation understood religious freedom and worked to balance protections for diverse religious communities with the rights of individual conscience illuminates the commitment to liberty at the heart of the American project.