A public conversation about our founders and their intent
Friday June 21, 2013 from 5pm-7pm
Great Friends Meeting House
21 Farewell Street, Newport, RI
The panel will address questions regarding what Rhode Island’s founders intended and expected when they wrote the 1663 Charter, what our nation’s founding fathers intended and expected regarding the separation of Church and State, and what it all means now. Public questions will be taken. Panelists include: John M. Barry, Daniel Cowdin, John Fea and Michael Feldberg.
JOHN M. BARRY
John M. Barry is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author whose books have won several dozen awards. His work includes: Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty along with Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America and The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Greatest Plague in History. Barry has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Fortune, The Washington Post, Esquire and frequently appears as a guest commentator on every broadcast network in the U.S., including NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s World News Tonight, PBS’s The News Hour, numerous NPR shows, and such foreign media as the BBC.
DANIEL COWDIN
Daniel Cowdin, Ph.D. is a professor of religious and theology studies at Salve Regina University.
JOHN FEA
John Fea , Ph.D. is Associate Professor of American History and Chair of the History Department at Messiah College in Grantham, PA. His writing on early American history has appeared in a variety of scholarly and popular venues. He is the author of The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian’s Vocation (Notre Dame University Press, 2010), and most recently Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011).
MICHAEL FELDBERG
Author and scholar Michael Feldberg, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the George Washington Institute of Religious Freedom. He has written several books including Blessings of Freedom: Chapters in American Jewish History.
Admission to How Christian an Understanding? is free, donations welcome. To register, visit: http://howchristiananunderstanding.eventbrite.com/. This program is generously sponsored by: The Spectacle of Toleration, the Governor’s 1663 Charter Commission, The Rhode Island Council for the Humanities and the Rhode Island Chapter of the ACLU.
The Spectacle of Toleration is a year-long event marking the 350th anniversary of the King Charles II charter. Admission is free, donations welcome. This is the third Spectacle of Toleration program; best-selling author James Carroll lectured in October 2012 and in May 2013 The Spectacle presented an afternoon concert, A Spectacle of Music, celebrating the sounds of 18th century Newport through four separate performances.
Upcoming Spectacle of Toleration programs include the October 2013 conference on the role of religious toleration in society, No Person Shall Bee Any Wise Molested. For more information about the Spectacle project, and other state-wide initiatives marking the 350th anniversary of the Charter, visit: http://www.spectacleoftoleration.org/.