Of the entire lds ceremony secretly filmed by a former mormon and kept to the worst kept secret of the 1840s, never before seen videos of secret Mormon Temple rituals. So in conclusion secrets sacred ritual, ex pose i offer these words as a storey line for a minority faith in america. Years ago this was crafted as pluralism and democracy and market place making spiritual choices, but the history recounted here added to a course of dissent from those depictions. On one hand this is a story of the americanize is of mormonisms how morals have chipped away at the secrets. On the other hand it is a reminder that the keeping and telling of secrets pushes scholars on to unstable ground. How should one study or narrate what partisans either want to keep hidden as a article of faith or expose as an act of democratic righteousness. Scholars of religion, journalists and political commenters it seems to me might see the space between taboo and fetish with regard to the secrets. Ideally we steer clear of both the zealotry of secretkeeping and the zealous compulsion to expose. We should position ourselves to better explain what is at stake in the keeping and the exposing across time and in the present. Thank you. [ applause ] good morning. I continue with the theme of outsider religious candidates those from outside of the protestant mainstream and merge that line of in inquiry with a more theoretical turn in American History for the last several decades, scholars of american religious history have had a definitional crisis the challenge of defining history to metaphysical terms and just over the last few years it has occurred to scholars if religion is a slippery category and if the definition of religion seems to look different in the United States than it does in india or turkey, now what about those categories that are defined in relation to religion. So what about secularism which is defined is that a mutually category and not also variable by time and place. And so im taking these two story lines one about minority religious candidates and one about variations in secularism and want to talk about protestant secularism. I was empowered by janet jakeson and nancy pell or iny that it was universal and fully separate from christianity so i accept as my starting point today the idea that what appears universal in the United States context is actually and this is jacobson and pellig rinny words is a protestant secularism. Many scholars of history have recently offered genealogies of this john lardist secularism in america has a story from the early 19th century and Tracy Fedderson is a literary historian from the founding to the present this narrative of protestant secularism. And scholars have noted that politicians and others interested in commerce and other political stability have distinct wished between distinguished between good and bad secularism and honor internal and external action. And john kerry did this in a interview for the public life project, lumping practices together and emphasizing the distinctive work of religion happened within the walls of the individual psyche. And it doesnt have to be a religion per se, he said, it can be a philosophy of life, buddhism behind eyeism and for some it is religion or not. But whatever religion or philosophy people adopt, they almost all have a golden rule within them. And if you are legitimately practicing them and practicing them well, you will be a pretty good person and that is his words. But some may have doingg mas of their own but they transfer them into values. Adherence of religion is not a switch between the internal and external domains. Fasten don put it as unobtrusiveness, protecting a neutral space converted and unconverted in alienism. And outsider candidates in the United States history have enthusiastically supported what is a protestant system. So catholics mormons, black protestants dont always pursue their religiouses and i want to take those of festen don and others and apply them to our actors in life the president ial candidates and so the other books and scholars tend to right about either deep careful readings of literary effects or tend to work through hugely abstract analysis of new machinery and new print culture. Im saying that the story they are telling about protestant secularism is clear and revealed in the most highly studied actors in our nations history president ial candidates. All im doing is taking this narrative and applying it to a different context. And it does it with Thomas Jefferson in our context. From jefferson to other president ial hopefuls they have done a little to enforce protestant secularism, with laws memorial rhetoric and road island they have fought against any form of religious fortune and have announced a quality of opportunity for people of all faiths under a deceptive protestant shell and remains a witness that the good is in the individual conscious as an incubator of values. Jefferson said outside of protestant citizens, jefferson is already the tolerant figure in every count of churchstate since he did pen most of the First Amendment, and the statuete of the First Amendment and he was also a principal architect of protestant secularism. Well the stage of monticello mocked dog mas in priest craft, leaving many scholars to characterize jeffer as more secular and modern than his peers. He was certainly no Orthodox Christian he was an adherence to scottish [ inaudible ] and this is meaningful right against moderns who has this work happening in the 18th century instead of 3040 years earlier. Jefferson did trace a root to secular protagism with the building of new machines. He addresses moral sense as much a part of a man as his arm, through which any individual could discern fundamental selfevident truths an matters of opinion about its truth claims about philosophy and religion was a tool in which anyone could evaluate propositions. His ability to use reason to unseat all false gods and to enshrine religion was important in the religious as the secular as constituted in the United States. As evangelicals would do later in the 19th century he advocated of what we now think of as secularism not to destroy christianist but to protect the liberty of the individual to discover nates god and in an elegant side step around the state of jeffersons wall of metaphor, and explaining the subtle distinction protecting free thought for its own sake and for the sake of facilitating the spread of true or good religion. He believed protecting a wall between church and state he could protect free inquiry and aid the process by which a purified christianity housed in reason rather than faith could become the americas religion. And this followed the wall image. When jefferson offered the hope that quote adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation on behalf of the rights of conscious, i shall see with ins sear satisfaction those sentiments that tend to restore to man all of his natural rights convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. Here he showed a tennant of secularism, that true minds will discover only such religious ten meants. As a retired senior statesman he left evidence of his obsession of crafting response to christianity that indicated good citizenship. Hisso points his opoints had seized upon his published markets in the state of virginia to argument he was dangerously indifferent to protestants and he used rather Strong Language to say that the legitimate powers arin injuryus to others and almost taunting supports that, quote it does me no injury to my neighbor to say there are no goes to say tlg are 20 gods. And to find even ground and for those cantankerous opponents and for what he set about for himself in answer in private how far he could take christianity by the devines. So he mailed that to Benjamin Russ in 1803 confessing to be a christian, quote in the only sense jesus wished anybody to be sincerely referenced to his doctrines, prescribing to himself in excellence and believing he claimed never other. Over the years he paged the gospel in different languages to the more robust jeffer bible he was clearly invested in discovering a way to approach to religion not leading to secular government. And jefferson personally endorsed and lent his pen to support secularism that was anything but neutral and instead he made normal protestant neutrality and emphasis on inner translation and communities of the faithful and jefferson strove to make reasonableness a gage of good and permissible religion and struck out against any attempts to strain anothers conscious. In a letter to russ he laid this out most clearly. Pledging to use all of his power if elected president to fight against attempts to introduce religious establishment he said ive sworn upon the alter of god eternal hostility of tyranny over the mind of man. When subsequent candidates found themselves in the shoes of jefferson in a overwhelmingly protestant country in this protestant secularism john kerry and mitt romney and barack obama operating outside of protestant secularism embedded in american law and culture, they have used a bully pulpit or their privileged spots on the campaign trail in the 24 hour media cycle to find good religion as that which provides internal transformation and consistent with reason and not presumed to enforce any distinctive moral code. Kerry, romney and obama have delivered one landmark religion speech. Billed as such and delivered as such and analyzed as such in which they have described, religion is a private exchange which translates into politics by expanding into the public good. And more over they have offered definitions slightly more capacious than jeffersons. And well do kerry depending on time. Well do romney. No obama today. Kerry addressed this on october 24th 2004 at a time he and bush were deadlocked in the polls at 49 each. He gave his speech in Broward County, florida at the site of symbolic significance and on sunday no less. He walked a delicate type right under scoring at every turn that his religious experience was only internal and more profound impulses toward the common good were the only marker ever his faith. He prayed and wrestled with catholicism during the vietnam war but resulted in a quote, sense of hope and belief in a higher purpose. At the rhetorical center of his address, he said it is not enough to say you have faith when there are no deeds. Faith without works. And he used this for public action. For me, he went on that, means having and holding to a vision of a society of the common good where individual rights and freedoms are connected to our responsibility for others and means understanding that the role of leadership is to advance the good to all of us when we Work Together as one united community. While kennedy had dispelled protestant concerns that a Roman Catholic president would influence american politics decades before, kerry felt compelled to revisit the issue. Roman catholics were obliged to live moral lives but not enact specific policy positions advocated by Church Leaders reminding his auditors of the controversy that created ink over the summer when bishops decided whether they should bar him from communon they decided no but three or four decided he would be barred until he repented of his prochoice bogss. He said i must cast votes or take opinions on a womans right to chose or stem cell research. But then trying to adhere to the boundaries of good religion by refusing to constrain anothers conscious he demured. I love my church. I respect the bishops but i respectfully disagree. He continues my task is not to write every doctrine into law. That is not right or possible in a pluralistic society. He enforced the protestant secularism and they nominated the candidate outside of the protestant fold when they put mitt romney up for the highest office. He would revisit his religion during the campaign, so he is not completely silent, but he made a statement during the republican primary four years previous. Facing a primary feel, including mike huckabee, an outspoken baptist, he speak about his religion of church of jesus christ of latterday saints. He refused to his religion and firmly placed the latterday saints in the category of different religions. He echoed very closely all of the lines of the Broward County speech. Romney led offer his discussion of faith by assuring people of faith that he would never allow religious authorities to dictate. Let me assure you, he levels that no authorities of my church or any other for that matter will insert influence on president ial decisions. Their providence is theres and ends when the affairs of the nation begin. He further vowed he would guard against any one tradition. I will put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of any office and the plain duty of the law he promised. Romney continued every religious has its own unique doctrines in history. This is a test of our tolerance. He returned verbatim to kerrys script at this point, almost verbatim it is kind of startling, declaring the primary purpose of faith was the sense of the common good and all of those religiouses willing to forebear at the ballot box. He declared before cataloguing what he thought were the win some features of the different religions. And while differences exist between the churches in america, we share a common creed of moral victory and there were the affairs of our nation is concerned, it is a sound rule to focus on the latter the great moral principals that urge us all on a common course. So the intention of the conversation was not to theerize state relations but the candidates, those at the center of our prominent life and the most common actors as citizens havin skriered and reinscribed the boundaries of common secularism and those outside of white protestant decisions have defended those just as energetically. Thank you. [ applause ] at this time, i would like to open up the floor for a couple of people to ask questions. I also just want to remind you that all of our speakers will be here for the entirety of the day and im volunteering them but im sure they will be willing to answer questions you dont get to ask during this formal time. And if would you like to ask a question, we have a couple of a couple of guys here who have microphones. Please allow the microphone to come to you and ask your question into the microphone so we can all hear you and the recording can also pick you up. So does anyone have would like to start with a question . We have one over here. Hi. This is a question for kate. Which i thought was a fascinating paper. And you touched on some is of the things that the people you looked at left out of their view of history. Unless i missed it in the talk, they left out the First Amendment and the religious freedom clauses which makes sense because it is a tricky thing today to deal with but they left out the great awakening which would seem to fit in with their version of history quite neatly. And then a quick followup, do these books and thinkers today looking at the founding era do they and into the colonial era, do they grapple with the problem of theocracy which is something in the people the people of the colonial era thought of, but it is prove lentz in the thought of the reformation into the 17th and 18th centuries. Thank you. Those are great questions. For the first great awakening, that just got left on the cutting room floor. That is a central moment for these thinkers. And especially George Whitfield because if the goal is to find particular men who exemplify the process, George Whitfield can play that role as the great evangelist and some pundits have argued he should be elevated to a high level and including attributing to George Whitfield the concept of the new birth which far predates George Whitfield. Some historians have come out and pushed back on that. But the great awakening and whitfield are seen as absolutely essential events. In terms of theocracy and First Amendments, those are not discussed with any significant depth and i think it is because of the focus on principal. So if liberty is the principal of the founding era it is embodied in the First Amendment, it is right and then we apply it to subsequent moments. So the complexities that might come out of what the First Amendment, the process of creating the amendment the different readings of the First Amendment those are addressed in the culture wars context and the culture wars context is usually off to the side of this discussion because it is so admittedly political. So no, it is not centrally prom prommelized. Hi. I have two questions. One for kate and one for spencer. My first question to kate is the link between im very interested in this link between moses or the ancient israelites and the may flower compact and speak how they linked them. Just curious to hear a little bit more on i dont know how much you read into this or if you know this, how they justified that link. A little more specifically, would you be curious. And then for spencer you talked about the colonization of mormons and it makes a lot of sense given theiro pressed status their history of oppression. Do still im curious has that dialogue changed as they are attempting to become the American Religion and how they talk about the oppression in the past and somehow becoming more of this allamerican sort of part of the mainstream and trying to be included sort of in that protestant mainstream. Can you speak to that a little bit. On the issue of moses and may flower compact, the immediate political context of this for those who might not know is the texas state board of education standards for 2010 which are now leading to text books which mark chancy will talk about later this afternoon, require the connecting of moses as sort of an original thinker for the creation of the United States and so this is something that texas teachers are grappling with right now, how to put moses into a process that by any reading he was very distant from. Happens in two ways. If moses is seen as a law giver and the may flower is seen as an original law that creates a union and law goes to foundational constitution and connected to our constituti