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Jews played a critical role both in winning the American Revolution—fighting for the patriot cause from Bunker Hill to Yorktown—and in defining the republic that was created from it. As the most visible non-Christian religion, Judaism was central to the debate over religious freedom in America at a critical juncture. Except for Philadelphia, the birthplace to the Declaration of Independence and a core of resistance, every city with a synagogue fell to the British during the war. Jewish patriots throughout the colonies flocked to Philadelphia, where they re-founded the local synagogue as a distinctively American organization. After the war, Jews began to press for full citizenship in the hope that liberty would apply to everyone, and that the limits to freedom imposed on Jews in the Old World would be removed in the New.

Drawing from his new book, Adam Jortner, Goodwin-Philpott Professor of Religion at Auburn University, demonstrates how the decision to extend citizenship to all religions was not a twentieth-century phenomenon prompted by immigration and Supreme Court rulings, but a debate the founding generation itself had—unambiguously deciding against the idea of nation defined exclusively by Christianity. Instead, the founders, Jewish patriots and their allies sought and achieved the broadest possible definition of religious liberty and the separation of church and state.

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About the Speaker

Adam Jortner is the Goodwin-Philpott Eminent Professor of Religion in the Department of History at Auburn University. He specializes in the history of religion in the American Revolution and the early nation, with particular emphasis on religious liberty, patriotism and piety, theology, and new religious traditions. Since joining the faculty at Auburn University in 2009, Dr. Jortner has published several works that include The Gods of Prophetstown: The Battle of Tippecanoe and the Holy War for the American Frontier (Oxford University Press, 2012), which was awarded the 2013 James Broussard Prize for the best first book in early American history; Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic (University of Virginia Press, 2017); and No Place for Saints: Mobs and Mormons in Jacksonian America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022).