June 21, 2018 Legal Historian to Discuss Historical Relationship of Religion, Politics and Law

Legal historian Sally Gordon will present the annual Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History Maguire Lecture titled, “When Congress Taxed Churches: Religion and Politics in the District of Columbia After the Civil War,” on Tuesday, July 10 at 3 p.m. The event will be held in LJ-119 on the first floor of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public.

Gordon held the Maguire Chair at the Library’s John W. Kluge Center in 2017. The talk will be the culmination of four months of research in Library’s collections for her upcoming book tentatively titled, “Freedom’s Holy Light: Disestablishment in America, 1776-1876.”  She is well known for her work on religion in American public life and the law of church and state, especially the ways that religious liberty developed over the course of American national history.

The Cary and Ann Maguire Chair is a distinguished, in residence senior research position appointed by the Librarian of Congress. Using research facilities and services at the Library of Congress, the scholar is expected to explore the history of America with special attention to the ethical dimensions of domestic economic, political and social policies. For more information, visit loc.gov/kluge/fellowships/maguire.html/.

The Kluge Center’s mission, as established in 2000, is to “reinvigorate the interconnection between thought and action,” bridging the gap between scholarship and policymaking. To that end, the Center brings some of the world’s great thinkers to the Library to make use of the Library collections and engage in conversations addressing the challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.

The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States—and extensive materials from around the world—both on-site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov; access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov; and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.