“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

What do the First Amendment’s religious clauses mean? How has the interpretation of their meaning changed over time? How has the Supreme Court applied the First Amendment to particular, often thorny, issues? Is the American state secular?

This class focuses on the skills, process, and practice of academic writing through an investigation and interrogation of religious tension in American society as revealed in courtroom clashes. The course examines contests between believers of the same and of different faiths, between believers and the state, and between believers and non-believers. It probes efforts to determine, and occasionally attempt to fix, the meaning of the free exercise and establishment clauses while questioning how they operate in tandem or at odds with one another. It investigates how the very act of legal decision-making renders definitions of and creates boundaries for religion.

This is a writing-intensive class designed to teach strategies for effective reading and thinking as well as argumentation and communication. Regular writing assignments of a variety of lengths, genres, and formality will provide multiple opportunities to draft, workshop, revise, rewrite, and polish ideas and prose.

Required Book:
Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Spirit of the Law: Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern America (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010)

Course Requirements:

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