VIDEO—Tisa Wenger, “Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal”
02.24.2019 | The Maxwell Institute
Tisa Wenger’s MI Guest Lecture is now available to watch online: “Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal.”
Watch
The ideal of religious freedom is rightly celebrated, but historian Tisa Wenger observes that the history of its uses is a “cautionary tale,” too. Religious freedom talk in America has tended to privilege the dominant white Christian population and to support U.S. imperial expansion. At the same time, minority groups at home and colonized people abroad have invoked and reinterpreted this ideal to defend themselves and their ways of life.
In this lecture, Tisa Wenger asks how we can understand the history of Latter-day Saint religious freedom talk within this broad comparative frame.
About Tisa Wenger
Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History in the Divinity School, American Studies, and Religious Studies at Yale University. She is author of “Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal” (University of North Carolina Press, 2017)
The views expressed here and in Maxwell Institute publications are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Maxwell Institute, Brigham Young University, or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.” (D&C 88:118)
Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History in the Divinity School, American Studies, and Religious Studies at Yale University. She is author of “Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal” (University of North Carolina Press, 2017)